Note 144 — Chapter XIX

It is a chastening exercise to read before proceeding with this Chapter an extract from Spencer Walpole's History of England, vol. iii, p. 317, under the year 1832: "The manufacturing industries of the country were collected into a few centres. In one sense the persons employed had their reward: the manufacturers gave them wages. In another sense their change of occupation brought them nothing but evil. Forced to dwell in a crowded alley, occupying at night a house constructed in neglect of every known sanitary law, employed in the daytime in an unhealthy atmosphere and frequently on a dangerous occupation, with no education available for his children, with no reasonable recreation, with the sky shrouded by the smoke of an adjoining capital, with the face of nature hidden by a brick wall, neglected by an overworked clergyman, regarded as a mere machine by an avaricious employer, the factory operative turned to the public house, the prize ring or the cockpit."