Page 15 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

—
a
A Slough of Despond.

Mothers, he added, commonly gave theu- children poppy-juice to
lull the little ones while they worked. Another recollects witnessing
a family of emigrants start on their journey. Six people were
huddled in straw at the back of a wagon loaded with pigs, and they
would spend two days in this manner while travelling the seventy
miles to London. An old Northumbrian remembered the coarse
barley cakes that were then the staple food of agricultural workers,
and he added that nobody could hope to rent a house under a
farmer in those days unless he could provide a " bondager —
"
" Master was master then; man
woman to work out at lOd. a day.
had little to do wi't." Meanwhile political economists taught
that " private interest is the great source of public good." The
story of how dissent from this dogma was treated at Kendal is, at
this time of day, not without a certain humour:
Many of the master shoemakers combined for the purpose of putting us
down; they determined not to employ any person belonging to our society,
or even anyone who worked or lodged with a co-operator. . . . The most
diabolical of their schemes to thwart us was the waylaying of our secretary
on his peaceable return from one of our meetings, who was attacked by throe
or four ruffians, who so shamefully maltreated him that, for a short time, he
was deprived of his senses ; a watchman, hastening to the spot, seized the man
who had been the most active in the foul deed, and without waiting to see
further into the matter dragged our bleeding friend, with the ruffian, to the
" black hole." Our secretary, who did not enjoy good health, was thus fluiig
into a beastly dungeon, where he had to continue for twelve hours; thon
taken before the Mayor, who discharged him, and ordered the man who had
abused him to pay £1 to the King ! but no recompense to our much-injured
secretary. The perpeti-ator of this foul deed was the son of a master shoe-
maker. ^
The reward of the active co-operator in 1830 evidently was not in
proportion to the need of him.
These particulars broadly illustrate working-class conditions
during the first quarter of the century. ^ It was a state that a people
^Lancashire and Yorkshire Co-operator, May, 1832.
'Frederick Engels' well-kno%vii study of The CondUions of the Working Classes in
England in ISU may be cited as carrying the story down to the Year of the Rochdale
Pioneers. Engrels gave much attention to some vanished slums of Manchester, as the
following description of conditions then existing on the banks of the Irk, close to
Balloon Street, will show:
" I'assing along a rough bank, among stakes and washing lines, one penetrates
into tills chaos of small one-storied, one-roomed huts, in most of which there ia uo
artificial floor; kitchen, living, and sleeping-room all in one. In such a hole, scarcely
five feet by sis feet, I found two beds—and such bedsteads and beds !—which, with a
staircase and chimney-place, exactly filled the room. . . . Everywhere before
the doors refuse and offal: and any sort of pavement that lay underneath could not
be seen, but only felt, here and there, with the feet. ThLs whole collection of cattle
sheds for human beings was surrounded on two sides by houses and a factory, and
on the third by the river, and besides the nurrow stair up the bank, a narrow doorway
alono led out into another almost cquaUy ill-built, ill-kept labyrinth of dwellings.
"Enough! The whole side of the Irk is built in this way." . (P. 51.)
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