Читать книгу Glimpses into the Abyss - Mary Higgs - Страница 8

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If society was profoundly affected by the change from agriculture to sheep farming that took place in the Elizabethan period, and other social changes that followed, how much more must we expect to find the effects of such a tremendous change as the Industrial revolution! John A. Hobson points out (in "Problems of Poverty," p. 24) that "the period from 1790 to 1840 was the most miserable epoch in the history of the English working classes." It is doubtful indeed whether we have really recovered from the "sickness" of that period. The rise in wages has largely been swallowed up by the enormous rise in rent, estimated by Sir Robert Giffen at 150 per cent. in fifty years, which in city life is felt most oppressively. "Classes" have, it is true, risen out of the "masses," including the upper working class, but the poverty of large populations is still extreme. It is a matter of grave moment for civilized society that in London, for example, according to Charles Booth's investigations, it can still be said that out of a population of 891,539, 111,000 might be swept out of existence and "no class nor any industry would suffer in the least." For the origin of such a mass of hopeless poverty, we must look to the miseries of the early factory times, and the oppressive pressure of capital on labour, only slowly being counteracted by legislation.

We have in fact added to the class of hereditary vagrants and those driven from means of subsistence by incapacity and helplessness, a third class which we may call "inefficient." The origin of this class is directly due to the incoming of the factory system and the specialisation of industry. As the demand for labour in towns grew, numbers of poor were attracted. Of these some were capable of attaining industrial skill, others were not. The latter became hangers-on to the rising industries. It is not sufficiently recognised that the pressure of the demands of capital on labour are continually increasing, and that, therefore, many fall below the standard of efficiency now who originally would not have done so. For example, in cotton mills the number of spindles per worker has greatly increased, and also the "speeding" of the machinery. A man who could work at the old pace might not be able to work at the new, and would therefore be rejected as "inefficient," but he would only be relatively "inefficient." Yet such is the skill necessary in British industries, that "low-skilled labour" is all that numbers of working lads can ever attain to, through defects in physique or education. It will easily be seen that this mass of "low-skilled" labour furnishes a third class from which vagrancy may easily be recruited, by slight relative changes in the prosperity of the community.[9]

Also there is another change, due to wide social differences in organisation, between the preceding century and the nineteenth, which has a direct bearing on the question of vagrancy, but has been little noticed. It is evident that facilities for migration must have some relation to amount of migration. In the days when it was a formidable journey to travel from London to Manchester, the fact affected all grades of society. The coming of the steam engine has meant more than industrial revolution, it spells social revolution. It has acted as a disintegrating as well as an integrating force. On the one hand the community is more closely bound together by newspapers, common customs, facilities for intercourse, and quick transit. On the other hand family ties are loosened, and a vagrant habit of migration, seasonal and otherwise, makes residence in a strange place no longer formidable. As a social solvent the effect of the railway can hardly be exaggerated. But an individual separated from family or social ties is easily loosened, if means of support fail, and quite a new form of vagrancy arises from "inefficient" industrials migrating in search of work.[10]

We must therefore consider next the attempt of the social organism to provide for the vagrancy of the new era, the reasons for its ineffectiveness, and the remedies most likely to succeed.

(1) The attempt we shall find in the provision of the tramp ward.

(2) The reasons for its ineffectiveness will best be elucidated by an examination of the actual conditions of things in respect to vagrancy at present. This will be given largely as a result of research work done by the writer, or of facts she has collected.

(3) It will then be necessary to examine first some remedies tried in other countries.

After this some attention may be paid to tentative experiments in our own country.

(4) It will then remain to sketch the lines of future development and if possible elucidate scientific outlines of possible progress from the collected facts.

The mass of these is so great that for the sake of brevity this historic prelude has been made very short. A most interesting historical study could be made of the relation of vagrancy to the ebb and flow of national life.