the Condition of England Flashcards
Leon Faucher 1805 - 54
LF - journal ‘Revue des Deus Mondes’ English version published 1844. Manchester ‘like a diligent spider’ similar to Dickens ‘Centre of the web’. ‘Puberty is developed before age and education have matured the moral sentiments, the factory girls are strangers to modesty’. ‘Febrile energy’ - nervous rather than healthy. He gives more emphasis on the role of the workers in their own misery - blames them?
Athenaeum member JP Culverwell publishes Faucher’s pamphlet as a way of exposing social problems - error town wages were in fact lower than urban ones and rents/food more expensive too.
Remedy - return to rural factories and paternalistic employers
E Engles 1845
Modern manufacture
Johanna Schopenhauer 1766-1838
E - The condition of the working class in England from personal observation and authentic sources - worked and lived in England, ‘from the great sewer gold flows’ - ‘The problems are consequences, demoralisation and degeneration. Cotton Lords v hands, death rate highest wages lowest. Remedy -class war, rich v poor
1) the forces of nature, 2) machinery replaces hand labour, 3) division of labour, mechanisation of spinning and weaving
S- Manchester, the famous factory town
William Cooke Taylor 1800-49
Asa Briges 1958
WCT - The Forrest of chimneys pouring forth volumes of steam and smoke
AB - Manchester was the shock city of the 1840’s
Joseph Adshead 1840-1842
‘Distress in Manchester: Evidence (tabular and otherwise) of the state of the labouring classes in 1840-42. Unlike Kay’s ‘tables only’ report contained a chapter ‘Narratives of Suffering’
Individual stories that personalised the report
Remedy - more charitable giving
Class
Thompson
Adam Smith 1723 - 1790 & Robert Malthus 1766 - 1834
C - Masters and factory hands - no paternalism
T - a sense of class identity emerged when groups came to define their interests as ‘opposed’
S & M - ‘political economy’ - support the idea that Market Forces should not be mitigated, the ‘hidden hand’ -Smith ‘laws of Universe’ if business slow reduce wages and lay off workers
Thomas Carlyle - 1995 - 1881
The Condition of England - a ‘son of the people’ opposed to the concept that ‘British Manufacturers constantly needed to reduce wages to remain competitive’. Against ‘political economy which he thought a ‘mechanical philosophy’
Wrote a ‘form on denunciation from the margins of society’
He advocated ‘Moral leadership by the middle and upper classes’
Tain Hippolyte
TUC
TH - ‘Notes on England’ 1872 - They (the workers) are fond if facts (Gradgrind?). How has England escaped revolution. Justice and fairness at work is an important part of class politics, importance of work to social identity, also print - banners, newspapers, posters etc. For workers justice = wages
Trade Union Congress of 1868 meant that workers were included in politics, Reform Act passed 1867 vote to adult male householders and lodger who paid rent of £10 for a year (unfurnished)
Equipoise achieved by an emphasis on connections between ‘the people’ shared interests rather than class
Utilitarianism
Bentham (1748 - 1832) - Human instincts cause us to seek pleasure and avoid pain
Applied to economics - self interest determines our actions and choices, promote the greatest good of the greatest number - applies these methods to social and economic issues
John Stuart Mill 1806-1873 modifies these views - political economy plus the education of the working classes through schemes of social improvement
Civil ethos - parks, libraries, sewage systems, roads , pavements to improve health, well being in towns and shape the character of the working classes and credit unions coop trade associations - inspire hard work, independence, thrift, self regulation - Manchester Town Hall
Patriarchal v Urban
P - The Greg’s, rural, Quarry Bank Mill, housing and gardens for work force, hard to keep employees, has to be looked after Engels did not like the Greg’s despite the better conditions Greg against trade unions, restrictions on trade and factory acts/ U - Ancoats - spinning can be done anywhere due canals, steam, cheap and poor quality housing, Irish immigrants, urbanism = cheap and available employees who can easily be laid off in fluctuating markets of 1800-1850s
Chartism
Factory Acts 1833, 1852-1867
c - A movement for the reform of parliament (1830-1840) demanding 1) universe male suffer age, 2) equal electoral districts (no rotten boroughs), 3) a secret ballot, 4) annual elections, 5) no property qualifications for MPs, 6) payment of MPs, ‘movement for electoral reform’ pre 1832, Anti Corn-Law league 1840s
FA - 1833, set limits re hours for children and young people in textiles, brought in Factory Inspectors. The age of equipoise, debate and discussion, stability between change and turmoil, emergence of a string civil culture & public politics. Shared interests create a sense of community
Slump 1842
The poor
The plug strikes bring factories to a standstill
TP - ‘Ardwick a Manchester district knows less about Ancoats than it does about China’
Irish Famin
The Corn Law
Aristocracy
IF - = Irish immigrants and depressed wages
CL - Restricted the importation of grain in favour of the landed gentry removing this removed restrictions to trade
A - The working and unworking aristocracy (past and present), worship mammon (wealth as an evil influence)
James Phillip Kay - physician at Ardwick and Ancoats
JPK - combatting cholera Manchester 1831-32. Report - ‘The moral and physical condition of the working class employed in the cotton manufacture in Manchester’ - ‘Poverty and lack of instruction and information leads to disease’ for ‘The want of good example’. ‘They ( the workers) no more choose (the moral and physical disease they suffer) than we choose the flu’. I.e. It’s a social contagion’
Remedy - dispel ignorance by giving better examples and moral instruction to the poor
David Ross 1842, chartist and Irish Catholic
‘The state of the country as the effect of class legislation and the charter as a remedy’
An argument against Political Economy from a Political Franchise rather than a moral standpoint
The Preston Lockout
Union Leaders - George Cowell and Mortimer Grimshaw (Slackbridge base?)
1848 wage cut by 10%, 1853 restored except by 4 factories in Preston
Lockout, £5,000 bond posted by anti union factory owners
10% And no surrender! Broadsides, posters, cartoons, penny ballads
Strike maintained for months (Feb 1854) blackleg labour brought in - Irish Knobsticks
