There followed, I said, a long period in which association among
working men was absolutely unknown. The history of this period, from a
craftsman's point of view, has never been written. It is, indeed, a
most terrible chapter in the history of industry.
Imagine, if you can, crowded districts in which there were no schools,
or but one school for a very few, no churches, no newspapers or books,
a place in which no one could read; a place in which every man, woman
and child regarded the Government of the country, in which they had
not the least share, as their natural enemy and oppressor. Among them
lurked the housebreaker, the highway robber, and the pickpocket. Along
the riverside, where many thousands of working men lived--at St.
Katherine's, Wapping, Shadwell, and Ratcliff--all the people together,
high and low, were in league with the men who loaded and unloaded the
ships in the river and robbed them all day long. What could be
expected of people left thus absolutely to themselves, without any
power of action, without the least thought that amendment was possible
or desirable? Can we wonder if the people sank lower and lower, until,
by the middle of the last century, the working men of London had
reached a depth of degradation that terrified everyone who knew what
things meant? Listen to the following words, written in the year 1772:
'To paint the manners of the lower rank of the inhabitants of London
is to draw a most disagreeable caricature, since the blackest vices
and the most perpetual scenes of villainy and wickedness are
constantly to be met with there.
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