at present, or rather, as they now vary their toil with intervals of dissipation, we may say that their fits and starts of labour and holiday were more wholesome when they depended on the flow of the waters than now when they are determined by the inclination of the workers. When, in former days, there was not water enough for the wheels, the grinding stopped perforce. As the flow might begin again at any moment, the men could not go far from the spot, so they used to sleep, or play, or drink and gossip on a green bank, or beside the weir. Where there was a whole hamlet of fork-grinders, eight or ten men might be collected in one room; and the dust from their wheels was then abundantly pernicious. But on the whole there seems to have been more air, and less of an aspect of fatality about the occupation than of late years. It is rational and wise to supersede water power by steam, wherever it can be done, not only for reasons of commercial economy, but to save health and life and good land by abolishing the practice of dams on flowing streams; but, when the Sheffield grinders were collected from these country spots, and assembled to grind in steam-mills, it was essential that they should use every precaution on behalf of their health. This is exactly what they will not do. They work cooped up in an atmosphere of grit and steel. A few of the more intelligent make more or less use of some apparatus for carrying off the dust: but the greater number oppose and resent all such concessions to reason; and the cry of all who would save them is now for an Act of Parliament to compel them to save their own lives. To save the women and children in factories we have passed a law which would be wholly indefensible, under our constitutional system, on behalf of men : and it would disgrace our country in the eyes of all the world if we were to pass such a censure on the working men of England as to make a law to prevent any class of them from wantonly throwing away their own lives, without any pretence of a reason, to keep up a high rate of wages. We must hope that some better method than an Act of Parliament will in time avail to stop this disgraceful form of suicide. Meantime, a well-known Sheffield physician has published the fact that whereas, in the kingdom generally, the number in a thousand who die between twenty and nine-ami twenty years old is 160—among the Sheffield fork-grinders the number is 475!
Many of the people complain that the fortunes of the town are sinking; and it is only too notorious that the character of the place has long been declining. As to its poverty—there is, we are told, a large class always in precarious circumstances—the small manufacturers who have been journeymen or jobmen, and who set up for themselves as soon as they have a little money in hand. With a fair chance of an even trade these small makers might do well, as their brethren in Birmingham do, on the whole; but the ravage of trades’-union tyranny has prevented any fair play to the Sheffield men. The largest capitalists cannot sustain the prosperity of the place while the labour market is disordered by the interference of trades’-union dictation: the manufacture leaves the place, and goes over to America and other countries, in spite of the eminent natural advantages of Sheffield. As the trade declines the men bring more and more of their children into it, and insist that wages shall not be lowered. They threaten the employers, and are jealous of one another; and they insist, among other things, on the grinders dying off as fast as they ever did. From time to time we hear of some plot to ruin or murder an employer ; and every year or two there is an explosion in some working-man’s bedroom or cellar, from a can of powder introduced by an enemy, in the name of the unionists; and thus Sheffield has acquired its bad name and its low place in the scale of English civilisation. It would be very interesting to see that population—naturally hardy, apt, strenuous, and skilful in toil— work its way up into a condition of health, comfort, prosperity, and good repute: and we should like to see them begin their reform with that great cause of disturbance—the grinder’s health.
If the grinder could once consider himself a man on equal terms with other men, as likely as they to live to threescore years and ten, he would at once be a wiser, a better, and a happier man. The Redditch needle-pointers have come round to show a sort of complacency in the clever contrivances for the preservation of their health, and a contemptuous pity for a man who can take no satisfaction in them. If the fork-grinders could attain thus much wisdom, any man of their class would soon be ashamed, instead of proud, of being pointed out as an old man at five-and-thirty. Their habits would be those of health, instead of reckless disease. Their skins would be cleaner if their lungs were not so foul. They would eat plain wholesome meals, instead of pampering themselves with costly diet—“feeding high to keep themselves up,” when every hour’s work is pulling them down. They would work and play more temperately and regularly when the ordinary prospect of bringing up and establishing a family of children was before them, instead of the excuse of custom for spending their great gains in debauchery for a few years, and leaving their widows and orphans to the charity of the world.
This class thus raised, the moral atmosphere would be purified to a certain extent, and the selfishness and violence which now render all law and order precarious would moderate by degrees, till the peculiar facilities at present afforded to tyranny over the working man would disappear. The managers of strikes have more scope for their cruel tyranny now in Sheffield than in more enlightened and orderly places; and great are the sufferings of employers and employed, whether they at once submit to slavery or resist it. If the matter is not settled sooner by the good sense and proper spirit of the citizens of all classes, it will by the loss of the trade of the town and district— already grievously reduced; but it is fair to hope that a body of workmen, renewed in health and heart and hope, by casting off a dreary doom, might reinstate the labour market and its liberties, and retrieve the fortunes of the place. If the thing is ever to be done, could it begin at a better point?
