Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 421, November 1850

Notwithstanding Mr Wauch's anathema, we have perused the book; and, while agreeing with him entirely in his strictures regarding its artistical construction, and admitting that, as an autobiography – which it professes to be – it is so palpably absurd in its details, as to diminish the effect of the lesson which it is meant to convey, we yet honour and respect the feeling which has dictated it, and our warmest sympathy is enlisted in the cause which it intends to advocate. No man with a human heart in his bosom, unless that heart is utterly indurated and depraved by the influence of mammon, can be indifferent to the welfare of the working-classes. Even if he were not urged to consider the awful social questions which daily demand our attention in this perplexing and bewildered age, by the impulses of humanity, or by the call of Christian duty, the lower motive of interest alone should incline him to serious reflection on a subject which involves the wellbeing, both temporal and eternal, of thousands of his fellow-creatures, and possibly the permanence of order and tranquillity in this realm of Great Britain. Our civil history during the last thirty years of peace resembles nothing which the world has yet seen, or which can be found in the records of civilisation. The progress which has been made in the mechanical sciences is of itself almost equivalent to a revolution. The whole face of society has been altered; old employments have become obsolete, old customs have been abrogated or remodelled, and old institutions have undergone innovation. The modern citizen thinks and acts differently from his fathers. What to them was object of reverence is to him subject for ridicule; what they were accustomed to prize and honour, he regards with undisguised contempt. All this we style improvement, taking no heed the whilst whether such improvement has fulfilled its primary condition of contributing to and increasing the welfare and prosperity of the people. Statistical books are written to demonstrate how enormously we have increased in wealth; and yet, side by side with Mr Porter's bulky tomes, you will find pamphlets containing ample and distinct evidence that hundreds of thousands of our industrious fellow-countrymen are at this moment famishing for lack of employment, or compelled to sell their labour for such wretched remuneration that the pauper's dole is by many regarded with absolute envy. Dives and Lazarus elbow one another in the street; and our political economists select Dives as the sole type of the nation. Sanitary commissioners are appointed to whiten the outside of the sepulchre; and during the operation, their souls are made sick by the taint of the rottenness from within. The reform of Parliament is, comparatively speaking, a matter of yesterday, and yet the operatives are petitioning for the Charter!

These are stern realities – grim facts which it is impossible to gainsay. What may be the result of them, unless some adequate remedy can be provided, it is impossible with certainty to predict; but unless we are prepared to deny the doctrine of that retribution which has been directly revealed to us from above, and of which the history of neighbouring states affords us so many striking examples, we can hardly expect to remain unpunished for what is truly a national crime. The offence, indeed, according to all elements of human calculation, is likely to bring its own punishment. It cannot be that society can exist in tranquillity, or order be permanently maintained, so long as a large portion of the working-classes, of the hard-handed men whose industry makes capital move and multiply itself, are exposed to the operation of a system which renders their position less tolerable than that of the Egyptian bondsman. To work is not only a duty but a privilege; but to work against hope, to toil under the absolute pressure of despair, is the most miserable lot that the imagination can possibly conceive. It is, in fact, a virtual abrogation of that freedom which every Briton is taught to consider as his birthright; but which now, however well it may sound as an abstract term, is practically, in the case of thousands, placed utterly beyond their reach.

We shall not probably be suspected of any intention to inculcate Radical doctrines. We have no sympathy, but the reverse, with the quacks, visionaries, and agitators, who make a livelihood by preaching disaffection in our towns and cities, and who are the worst enemies of the people whose cause they affect to advocate. We detest the selfish views of the Manchester school of politicians, and we loathe that hypocrisy which, under the pretext of reforming, would destroy the institutions of the country. But if it be true – as we believe it to be – that the working and producing classes of the community are suffering unexampled hardship, and that not of a temporary and exceptional kind, but from the operation of some vicious and baneful element which has crept into our social system, it then becomes our duty to attempt to discover the actual nature of the evil; and having discovered that, to consider seriously what cure it is possible to apply. That there is a cure for every evil, social, moral, or physical, it is worse than cowardice to doubt. And we need not be surprised if, in our search, we find ourselves compelled to arrive at some conclusions totally hostile to the plans which the so-called Liberals have encouraged – nay, so hostile, that beneath that mask of Liberalism we can plainly descry the features of greedy and ravenous Mammon, enticing his victims by a novel lure, and gloating and grinning in triumph over their unsuspicious credulity.

The author of Alton Locke is at least no vulgar theorist, though a warm imagination and great enthusiasm have led him occasionally to appear most vague and theoretical. He has had recourse to fiction, as the most agreeable, and probably the most efficacious mode of bringing his peculiar social views under the notice of the public; but in doing so, he has fallen into an error very common with recent novelists, who have undertaken to depict certain phases of society, with ulterior views beyond the mere amusement of the reader. He has not studied, or he does not understand, what has been fitly termed the properties of a composition: he allows himself in almost every chapter to outrage probability; his situations are often ludicrously incongruous; and the language of his characters, as well as that employed throughout the narrative, is totally out of keeping with the quality and circumstances of the interlocutors. That a young and gifted tailor, who for the whole day has been pent up in a stifling garret, with the symptoms of consumptive disease unmistakeably developed in his constitution, should also devote the moiety of his hours of rest to the acquisition of the Latin language, and become in three months' time a perfect master of Virgil, is not an impossibility, though we opine that such instances of suicidal exertion are comparatively rare; but when we find the same young man, not only versed in the classics, but tolerably acquainted with the Italian and German poets, a fluent speaker of French, an accurate historian, a proficient in divinity, in metaphysics, and in natural science – a disciple of Tennyson in verse, and a pupil of Emerson in style – the draft upon our credulity is somewhat too large, and we must necessarily decline to honour it. The world has only beheld one Admirable Crichton; and even he is rather a myth than a reality – seeing that we can merely judge of the extent of his acquirements by the vague report of contemporaries, and the collections of an amusing coxcomb, who, out of very slender materials, has contrived to construct a ponderous and bombastic romance.49 Crichton has not left us one scrap of writing to prove that his attainments were more than the results of a gigantic memory, aided by a singularly acute and logical intellect. But Alton Locke altogether eclipses Crichton. The latter had, at all events, the full benefit of the schools: the former was wholly devoid of such instruction. Crichton spent his days at least in the College; Alton sat stitching on the shop-board. So that the existence of such a phenomenon becomes worse than problematical, especially when we find that, after abandoning paletots and launching into a literary career, Mr Locke could find no more profitable employment than that of writing articles for a Chartist newspaper, which articles, moreover, were by no means invariably inserted. We take this to be the leading fault of the book, because it is infinitely more glaring than even exaggerated incident. In the hands of such a writer as Defoe, the story of Alton Locke would have assumed the aspect of woeful and sad reality. Not an expression would have been allowed to enter which could betray the absolute and irreconcilable difference between the mental powers, habits, and acquirements of the author and his fictitious hero: we should have had no idealism, at least of the transcendental kind; and no dreams, decidedly of a tawdry and uninterpretable description, which bear internal evidence of having been copied at second-hand from Richter.

Let it, however, be understood, that these remarks of ours are not intended to detract from the genius, the learning, or the descriptive powers of the writer. Where excellencies such as these exist, even though they may be of rare occurrence, anything approaching to absurdity or incongruity is far more painfully, or rather provokingly, apparent than in the work of a common hackneyed novelist, from whom we expect no better things: and the error is peculiarly felt when it is calculated in any degree to convey the notion that the pictures shadowed forth upon the canvass are rather ideal than true. This mode of dealing with a subject is by no means the best to insure sympathy. Men are naturally incredulous of pain, and unwilling to believe in suffering, more especially when it is said to exist in their own vicinity, and may be the effect of their own indifference or caprice. Many persons will read Alton Locke, not unmoved by the wretchedness which it depicts – not without feeling a thrill of indignation at the bondage under which the operative is said to labour from the ruthless system of competition – and yet lay down the book unconvinced of the actual existence of such misery, and no more inclined to bestir themselves for its remedy than if they had been the spectators of a tragedy, the scene of which was laid in another country, and the period indicated as occurring in the middle ages. Nor is it possible to blame them for this; for, as the whole tenor of the work belies its assumed character, it is hard to expect that any one shall give credence to mere details, or such qualified credence as shall enable him to accept them as accurate representations of existing facts, in the face of the evident obstacle which meets him at the beginning. The usefulness of many clever books in this range of literature has been impaired by the authors' wanton neglect, or rather wilful breach, of the leading rules of propriety. Few people will accept Mr D'Israeli's novel of Sybil as containing an accurate representation of the state of the people of England in the middle of the nineteenth century, simply because the writer is chargeable with the same error; and yet recent disclosures have abundantly proved that many of the social pictures contained in Sybil were drawn with extreme accuracy, and without any attempt at exaggeration.

We shall now attempt to sketch out the story of Alton Locke, in order that our readers may comprehend the nature of the book with which we are dealing – less, we admit, on account of the book itself, than for the sake of the subject which it is manifestly intended to illustrate. By no other method can we do justice to the topic; and if situations should occur which may seem to justify the strictures of Mr Wauch, and to provoke a smile, we ask indulgence for the sake of a cause which is here most earnestly advocated – according to the best of his ability – by a man of no common acquirements, zeal, energy, and purity of purpose, though the warmth of his heart may very frequently overpower the discretion of his head.

Alton Locke, the subject of this autobiography, is the son of poor parents. His father had failed in business as a grocer, having imprudently started a small shop, without adequate capital, in an obscure district of London, where indeed there were far too many such already, and died, "as many small tradesmen do, of bad debts and a broken heart, and left us beggars." Alton's mother was a woman of a sterner mood. Reared in the most rigid tenets of the Baptist sect, and steeped in the austerest Calvinism, she regarded this world necessarily as a place of tribulation and inevitable woe, and fought and struggled on right earnestly, mortifying every natural affection in her bosom, except love to her children, and exhibiting that only through the medium of severity and restraint.

"My mother," says Alton, "moved by rule and method; by God's law, as she considered, and that only. She seldom smiled. Her word was absolute. She never commanded twice without punishing. And yet there were abysses of unspoken tenderness in her, as well as clear, sound, womanly sense and insight. But she thought herself as much bound to keep down all tenderness as if she had been some ascetic of the middle ages – so do extremes meet! It was 'carnal,' she considered. She had as yet no right to have any 'spiritual affection' for us. We were still 'children of wrath and of the devil' – not yet 'convinced of sin,' 'converted, born again.' She had no more spiritual bond with us, she thought, than she had with a heathen or a Papist. She dared not even pray for our conversion, earnestly as she prayed on every other subject. For though the majority of her sect would have done so, her clear logical sense would yield to no such tender inconsistency. Had it not been decided from all eternity? We were elect, or we were reprobate. Could her prayers alter that?"

A gruesome carline this, and a revolting contrast to dear old Mause Headrigg, who not only prayed morning and night, but never doubted as to the destiny of Cuddie! Mrs Locke's conversation, however, had its charms; for we find that, in a small way, she was fond of entertaining ministers of her own persuasion at tea, and Alton's ire was early kindled by the precipitancy with which on such occasions the sugar and muffins disappeared. The old lady, moreover, had a kind of ancestral pride, being traditionally descended from a Cambridgeshire puritan who had turned out under Cromwell; and of a winter night she would tell the children long stories about the glorious times when Englishmen arose to smite kings and prelates. Of course these things had their effect. Little Alton did not become a fanatic, for this kind of religious training is never palatable to the young: he became, indeed, a sceptic as soon as he could think for himself, with a nice little germ of radicalism ready to expand whenever circumstances would permit of its development.

That period quickly arrived. Alton's paternal uncle had been as fortunate in business as his brother was unlucky, and was now a kind of city magnate – purse-proud, yet not altogether oblivious of his poorer kith and kin. He had an only son, who was to be the inheritor of his wealth, and who, being destined for the Church, was undergoing the necessary education. To this relative, who made her an annual petty allowance, Mrs Locke applied for advice regarding her son, now a cadaverous lad of fifteen, with a weak constitution, and a tendency to the manufacture of verse; and by his advice and recommendation, Alton was introduced to a tailoring establishment at the West End. Uncle certainly might have done something better for him; but perhaps he had George Barnwell in his eye: and, moreover, any superior settlement would probably have spoilt the story. Here is his first entry into the new scene:

"I stumbled after Mr Jones up a dark, narrow, iron staircase, till we emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to work – perhaps through life! A low lean-to room, stifling me with the combined odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look of care and wretchedness that made me shudder. The windows were tight-closed, to keep out the cold winter air: and the condensed breath ran in streams down the panes, chequering the dreary look-out of chimney-tops and smoke. The conductor handed me over to one of the men."

This is intended, or at all events given, as an accurate picture of a respectable London tailoring establishment, where the men receive decent wages. Such a house is called an "honourable" one, in contradistinction to others, now infinitely the more numerous, which are springing up in every direction under the fostering care of competition. As it is most important that no doubt should be left in the minds of any as to the actual condition of the working classes, we quote, not from Alton Locke, but from one pamphlet out of many which are lying before us, a few sentences explanatory of the system upon which journeymen tailors in London are compelled to work. The pamphlet, for aught we know, may be written by the author of the novel; but it is clear, specific, and apparently well-vouched.

"It appears that there are two distinct tailor trades – the 'honourable' trade, now almost confined to the West End, and rapidly dying out there; and the 'dishonourable' trade of the show-shops and slop-shops – the plate-glass palaces, where gents – and, alas! those who would be indignant at that name – buy their cheap-and-nasty clothes. The two names are the tailors' own slang: slang is new and expressive enough though, now and then. The honourable shops in the West End number only sixty; the dishonourable, four hundred and more; while at the East End the dishonourable trade has it all its own way. The honourable part of the trade is declining at the rate of one hundred and fifty journeymen per year; the dishonourable increasing at such a rate, that in twenty years it will have absorbed the whole tailoring trade, which employs upwards of twenty-one thousand journeymen. At the honourable shops the work is done, as it was universally thirty years ago, on the premises, and at good wages. In the dishonourable trade, the work is taken home by the men, to be done at the very lowest possible prices, which decrease year by year, almost month by month. At the honourable shops, from 36s. to 24s. is paid for a piece of work for which the dishonourable shop pays from 22s. to 9s. But not to the workman; happy is he if he really gets two-thirds or half of that. For at the honourable shops the master deals directly with his workmen; while at the dishonourable ones, the greater part of the work, if not the whole, is let out to contractors, or middle men – 'sweaters,' as their victims significantly call them – who in their turn let it out again, sometimes to the workmen, sometimes to fresh middlemen; so that out of the price paid for labour on each article, not only the workmen, but the sweater, and perhaps the sweater's sweater, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth have to draw their profit. And when the labour price has been already beaten down to the lowest possible, how much remains for the workmen after all these deductions, let the poor fellows themselves say!"50

These sweaters are commonly Jews, to which persuasion also the majority of the dishonourable proprietors belong. Few people who emerge from the Euston Square Station are left in ignorance as to the fact, it being the insolent custom of a gang of hook-nosed and blubber-lipped Israelites to shower their fetid tracts, indicating the localities of the principal dealers of their tribe, into every cab as it issues from the gate. These are, in plain terms, advertisements of a more odious cannibalism than exists in the Sandwich Islands. Very often have we wished that the miscreant who so assailed us were within reach of our black-thorn cudgel, that we might have knocked all ideas of fried fish out of his head for at least a fortnight to come! In these days of projected Jewish emancipation, the sentiment may be deemed an atrocious one, but we cannot retract it. Shylock was and is the true type of his class; only that the modern London Jew is six times more personally offensive, mean, sordid, and rapacious than the merchant of the Rialto. And why should we stifle our indignation? Dare any one deny the truth of what we have said? It is notorious to the whole world that these human leeches acquire their wealth, not by honest labour and industry, but by bill-broking, sweating, discounting, and other nefarious arts, which inevitably lead the unfortunate victims who have once trafficked with the tribe of Issachar, to the spunging houses of which they have the monopoly; nor can the former escape from these loathsome dens – if they ever escape at all – without being stripped as entirely as any turkey when prepared for the spit at the genial season of Christmas. Talk of Jewish legislation indeed! We have had too much of it already in our time, from the days of Ricardo, the instigator of Sir Robert Peel's earliest practices upon the currency, down to those of Nathan Rothschild, the first Baron of Jewry, for whose personal character and upright dealings the reader is referred to Mr Francis' Chronicles of the Stock Exchange.

It is little wonder if men who know not what a scruple of conscience is, should amass enormous fortunes. It is much to be regretted that our present state of society affords them such ample opportunities. We allude not now to the plundering of heirs expectant, or the wheedling of young men just fresh from the colleges, and launched upon the town, to their ruin – to fraudulent dodges for affecting unnatural oscillations of stocks, or those more deliberate schemes which result in important public changes being effected for the private emolument of a synagogue. Bad as these things are – shameful and abhorrent as they must be to every mind alive to the ordinary feelings of rectitude – they are not yet so bad or so shameful as the deliberate rapine which is exercised upon the poor by the off-scourings of the Caucasian race. Read the following account by a working tailor of their doings, and then settle the matter with your conscience, whether it is consistent with the character of a Christian gentleman to have dealings with such inhuman vampires: —

"In 1844 I belonged to the honourable part of the trade. Our house of call supplied the present show-shop with men to work on the premises. The prices then paid were at the rate of 6d. per hour. For the same driving-capes that they paid 18s. then, they give only 12s. now. For the dress and frock coats they gave 15s. then, and now they are 14s. The paletots and shooting coats were 12s.; there was no coat made on the premises under that sum. At the end of the season they wanted to reduce the paletots to 9s. The men refused to make them at that price when other houses were paying as much as 15s. for them. The consequence of this was, the house discharged all the men, and got a Jew middleman from the neighbourhood of Petticoat Lane to agree to do them all at 7s. 6d. a piece. The Jew employed all the poor people who were at work for the slop warehouses in Houndsditch and its vicinity. This Jew makes on an average 500 paletots a week. The Jew gets 2s. 6d. profit out of each; and having no sewing trimmings allowed to him, he makes the workpeople find them. The saving in trimmings alone to the firm, since the workmen left the premises, must have realised a small fortune to them. Calculating men, women, and children, I have heard it said that the cheap house at the West End employs 1000 hands. The trimmings for the work done by these would be about 6d. a week per head, so that the saving to the house since the men worked on the premises has been no less than £1300 a year; and all this is taken out of the pockets of the poor. The Jew who contracts for making the paletots is no tailor at all. A few years ago he sold sponges in the street, and now he rides in his carriage. The Jew's profits are 500 half-crowns, or £60 odd per week; that is upwards of £3000 a-year."

The salary of a puisne judge of the Court of Session in Scotland! A profitable commencement of life that of dealing in sponges, seeing that it endows the vender with the absorbent qualities of the marine vegetable! And mark the consequences which may befall those who connive at such iniquity by their custom! We still quote from the same pamphlet, not to deaf ears we trust, while telling them of the calamity which such conduct may bring home to their own hearths, as it has done already to that of hundreds who worship Cheapness as a god.