PURPLE PATCH: Whither our children —Friedrich Engels
PURPLE PATCH: Whither our children —Friedrich Engels
The great mortality among children of the working class, and especially
among those of the factory operatives, is proof enough of the
unwholesome conditions under which they pass their first years. These
influences are at work, of course, among the children who survive, but
not quite so powerfully as upon those who succumb. The result in the
most favourable case is a tendency to disease, or some check in
development, and consequent less than normal vigour of the
constitution. A nine-year-old child of a factory operative that has
grown up in want, privation, and changing conditions, in cold and damp,
with insufficient clothing and unwholesome dwellings, is far from
having the working strength of a child brought up under healthier
conditions. At nine years of age it is sent into the mill to work 61/2
hours (formerly 8, earlier still, 12 to 14, even 16 hours) daily, until
the thirteenth year; then twelve hours until the eighteenth year. The
old enfeebling influences continue, while the work is added to them,
but in no case can its presence in the damp, heavy air of the factory,
often at once warm and wet, contribute to good health; and, in any
case, it is unpardonable to sacrifice to the greed of an unfeeling
bourgeoisie the time of children which should be devoted solely to
their physical and mental development, and to withdraw them from school
and the fresh air in order to wear them out for the benefit of the
manufacturers.
Commissioners
mention a crowd of cripples who appeared before them, who clearly owed
their distortion to the long working hours. This distortion usually
consists of a curving of the spinal column and legs. I have seldom
traversed Manchester without meeting three or four, suffering from
precisely the same distortions of the spinal columns and legs, and I
have often been able to observe them closely. I know one personally who
got into this condition in Mr Douglas’s factory in Pendleton, an
establishment which enjoys an unenviable notoriety among the operatives
by reason of the former long working periods continued night after
night. It is evident, at a glance, whence the distortions of these
cripples come, they all look exactly alike. The knees are bent inward
and backwards, the ankles deformed and thick, and the spinal column
often bent forwards or to one side.
In cases in which a stronger
constitution, better food, and other more favourable circumstances
enabled the young operative to resist this effect of a barbarous
exploitation, we find, at least, pain in the back, hips, and legs,
swollen joints, varicose veins, and large, persistent ulcers in the
thighs and calves. These afflictions are almost universal among the
operatives.
All these afflictions are easily explained by the
nature of factory-work, which is, as the manufacturers say, very
“light”, and precisely by reason of its lightness, more enervating than
any other. The operatives have little to do, but must stand the whole
time. Anyone who sits down, say upon a window-ledge or a basket, is
fined, and this perpetual upright position, this constant mechanical
pressure of the upper portions of the body upon spinal column, hips,
and legs, inevitably produces the results mentioned. This standing is
not required by the work itself, and at Nottingham chairs have been
introduced, with the result that these maladies disappeared. This long
protracted upright position, with the bad atmosphere prevalent in the
mills entails, besides the deformities mentioned, a marked relaxation
of all vital energies, and, in consequence, all sorts of other
afflictions general rather than local. The atmosphere of the factories
is, as a rule, at once damp and warm, far warmer than is necessary,
and, when the ventilation is not very good, impure, heavy, deficient in
oxygen, filled with dust and the smell of the machine oil, which almost
everywhere smears the floor, sinks into it, and becomes rancid. The
operatives are lightly clad by reason of the warmth, and would readily
take cold in case of irregularity of the temperature; a draught is
distasteful to them, the general enervation which gradually takes
possession of all the physical functions diminishes the animal warmth:
this must be replaced from without, and nothing is therefore more
agreeable to the operative than to have all the doors and windows
closed, and to stay in his warm factory-air. Then comes the sudden
change of temperature on going out into the cold and wet or frosty
atmosphere, without the means of protection from the rain, or of
changing wet clothing for dry, a circumstance which perpetually
produces colds. And when one reflects that, with all this, not one
single muscle of the body is really exercised, really called into
activity, except perhaps those of the legs; that nothing whatsoever
counteracts the enervating, relaxing tendency of all these conditions;
that every influence is wanting which might give the muscles strength,
the fibres elasticity and consistency; that from youth up, the
operative is deprived of all fresh air recreation.
(This extract is taken from The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels)
Friedrich
Engels was a German social scientist, author, political theorist,
philosopher and father of communist theory alongside Karl Marx
In : Friedrich Engels
Notes