The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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A.D. 1776 —1850. ohen a Jommis- ston re- ported in 1840. LAISSEZ FAIRE smployer had survived from the time when this older practice had been generally current. There came, in consequence, to be elements of uncertainty, and serious deductions from the miner's pay, which prevented him from receiving a regular reward for the time spent at his work?. This matter, however, like all questions in regard to 2dult male labour, lay outside the scope of the investigation which was undertaken on the motion of Lord Ashley. . He had been taunted with a special animus against factory- owners, and in 1840 he proceeded to move that a Commission should be appointed to investigate the whole subject of the employment of women and children in collieries and mines’. In 1842, the Commission presented their Report?, which revealed such a disgusting and brutalising state of affairs, that there was a unanimity of opinion in favour of an immediate measure of redress, This was all the more 304 shance. The working miner is almost always in some measure a gambler, and »mbarks in the adventures of the mine. In common, the miner is nod disposed to adjust the scale of his expenses to the average of his earnings. Being accustomed 0 the occasional receipt of considerable sums of money, money too which has owed in suddenly upon bim, rather from good fortune than from proportionate sxertions, he often raises his expenditure and mode of living to a pitch, to which :he labourer in agriculture ventures not to aspire. He feeds on better diet, and wears clothes of finer materials than the husbandman. «And, in general, he persists in this manner of life, in spite of a change of “ircumstances. He is buoyed up with the sanguine hopes of a gamester: and for what he cannot pay to-day draws on the favourable luck of to-morrow. This natural propensity is cherished and aggravated by the ease with which he obtains credit, in comparison of those classes of labourers whose gains though steady, are jmited. If he happens to be unsnecessful, he is trusted nevertheless at shops, ind permitted to run up long scores at public-houses, through the hopes enter- :ained by the shopkeeper and the publican that a day will come when fortune wilt smile on the debtor. Thus the habits of the miner are seldom interrupted by any rubs and difficulties which may teach him caution. He has lese occasion than nost other men to dread the immediate inconveniences of poverty; and does not willingly learn the necessity of frugality and forecast.” Georgical Essays, by A. Hunter, Vol. I. (1803), 49, On the Situation of the Mining Poor, by Rev. T. Gisborne. 1 This state of things constituted a ground of appeal to the public. ‘Let me tell you, brave men, that the great object which you at present seek becomes sretty generally known to the public, to consist simply in getting twelve hours wages for every twelve hours you labour, as no other men on earth have ever been -equired to toil.” An earnest Address and Urgent Appeal to the People of England in behalf of the oppressed and suffering Pitmen of the Counties of Northumberland and Durham, by W. Scott, 1831, p. 19. On the irregularity of payment to lead miners, see F. Hall, Appeal to the Poor Miner (1818), p. 40, 2 3 Hansard, Lv. 1260. 8 Reports, 1842, xv. XVI. XVIL

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