THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE
'And do your workmen,' asked a London visitor of a Lancashire
mill-owner--'do your workmen really live in those hovels?'
'Certainly not,' replied the master. 'They only sleep there. They live
in my mill.'
This was forty years ago. Neither question nor answer would now be
possible. For the hovels are improved into cottages; the factory hands
no longer live only in the mill; and the opinion, which was then held
by all employers of labour, as a kind of Fortieth Article, that it is
wicked for poor people to expect or hope for anything but regular work
and sufficient food, has undergone considerable modification. Why,
indeed, they thought, should the poor man look to be merry when his
betters were content to be dull? We must remember how very little play
went on even among the comfortable and opulent classes in those days.
Dulness and a serious view of life seemed inseparable; recreations of
all kinds were so many traps and engines set for the destruction of
the soul; and to desire or seek for pleasure, reprehensible in the
rich, was for the poor a mere accusation of Providence and an opening
of the arms to welcome the devil. So that our mill-owner, after all,
may have been a very kind-hearted and humane creature, in spite of his
hovels and his views of life, and anxious to promote the highest
interests of his employes.
Pages:
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293