Nicholas Higgins (Mrs Gaskell)

Nicholas Higgins is a shop steward or at least an enthusiastic union member, although he is presented more sympathetically than Slackbridge in Hard Times. I am intrigued that the attitudes of people like Higgins stayed pretty much the same for at least 130 years, until Thatcher cut them off at the knees during the 80s, and Reagan did the same to the unions in the US. Nicholas Higgins seems pretty similar to Robert Owen, who is Robert Tressell's mouthpiece in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, written over fifty years later. Both Higgins and Owen are Socialists for want of a better word. Both Higgins and Owen are atheists. Owen is not in a union because he and all his colleagues are employed on a job-by-job basis, but he is equally left wing. What surprises me about Higgins is that North and South was written before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species undermined religious belief, and Karl Marx had provided a theoretical background to support their political views. I see from Wikipedia that Marx had written stuff before the 1850's, and I don't suppose he was the only one, but I doubt these works had been very widely disseminated by then.

I looked up Karl Marx on the interweb, and it is possible (although maybe not plausible) that Higgins had come across The Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels about 1850. That was written in German, but it was translated into English in 1850 by a woman called Helen Macfarlane. 'That's interesting,' I thought, so I looked up Helen Macfarlane, and get this:

Helen’s father, George Macfarlane (1760-1842), was an owner of calico-printing works at Crossmill, Barrhead and at Campsie in the Vale of Leven. Her mother, née Helen Stenhouse (born 1772), came from a similar middle-class family of callico-printers. Both families prospered in the production of ‘Turkey Red’ bandanas, which were very popular fashion items. Helen was the youngest of the Macfarlanes’ eleven children. The workforce in the calico mills was highly unionised, but during the economic distress of the 1830s, the calico printers went on strike against the introduction of unskilled labour. The mill-owners (including the Macfarlanes) were able to call on the government to break the strike by sending in the Dragoons.


Some interesting parallels with North and South.

I was interested to read Helen Macfarlane critiqued Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle. I wonder what she said. I wonder if she had anything to say on North and South.

After reading chap 28, I doubt if Mr Higgins had read anything like the Communist Manifesto. He says his employer tried to press a book on him about economics, but that he did not understand it. Mr Higgins is an intelligent chap and he can read, but his reading is not very good. I like the character of Mr Higgins, but he always puts me on edge. I wondered if the book that Mr Hamper tried to press on Mr Higgins was The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smitth, but Mr Hamper said he was a friend of the author, and Adam Smith would have been long dead. I think Mr Higgins would have been right to be sceptical of the contents, whether or not he understood it. I wonder what that book might have been.

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Originally Posted by kev67

After reading chap 28, I doubt if Mr Higgins had read anything like the Communist Manifesto. He says his employer tried to press a book on him about economics, but that he did not understand it. Mr Higgins is an intelligent chap and he can read, but his reading is not very good. I like the character of Mr Higgins, but he always puts me on edge. I wondered if the book that Mr Hamper tried to press on Mr Higgins was The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smitth, but Mr Hamper said he was a friend of the author, and Adam Smith would have been long dead. I think Mr Higgins would have been right to be sceptical of the contents, whether or not he understood it. I wonder what that book might have been.

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The big contemporary names are J S Mill and Karl Marx, but as you say Marx is unlikely. Could it have been The Condition of the Working Class in England by Engels? He lived in Manchester at the time, so may have been a friend of Mr Hamper. Perhaps it was something by Harriet Martineau, who was known to Mrs Gaskell and who used to write essays on Political Economy. But there must have been quite a few books on economics at the time by now forgotten authors.

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Originally Posted by mona amon

The big contemporary names are J S Mill and Karl Marx, but as you say Marx is unlikely. Could it have been The Condition of the Working Class in England by Engels? He lived in Manchester at the time, so may have been a friend of Mr Hamper. Perhaps it was something by Harriet Martineau, who was known to Mrs Gaskell and who used to write essays on Political Economy. But there must have been quite a few books on economics at the time by now forgotten authors.

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I doubt it was Engles because Mr Hamper is a factory owner. It is unlikely he would want to hand out left wing tracts to his disgruntled employees. For the same reason, I doubt it was J S Mill. I wondered whether it might have been David Ricardo, but I think he came a bit earlier. Perhaps it was Stanley Jevons. I will look up Harriet Martineau.

Yes, Ricardo died in 1823, too early to be a friend of any of the characters. Jevons fits the timeline but wasn't he all math and stat and theory (I don't remember much about him). Mill started off as a free market economist who later started to lean towards more socialistic views, but I too doubt it was him.

I know about Harriet Martineau mostly because she was a friend of Charlotte Bronte, who later unfriended her because of Martineau's criticism of the way love was treated in Villette.

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Originally Posted by mona amon

Jevons fits the timeline but wasn't he all math and stat and theory (I don't remember much about him).

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Yes, the Jevons Paradox is named after him. Which is (I think) if you make a manufacturing process more efficient, the result is more jobs not fewer, because more people can afford the products. The paradox is applied to energy consumption too. If you make a device more energy efficient, the result is more energy consumption, not less, because more people can afford to run the device.

I read a book of his called The Coal Question. He was worried that Britain was running out of economically recoverable coal, and that once that happened Britain would lose her predominant position in the world to the Americans.

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Originally Posted by mona amon

I know about Harriet Martineau mostly because she was a friend of Charlotte Bronte, who later unfriended her because of Martineau's criticism of the way love was treated in Villette.

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That sounds like Charlotte Bronte. She seems to have been quite a prickly character.