Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424

Before proceeding to expound the various duties thus imposed upon the employer, the writer lays down a primary duty as essential to the due performance of the rest—namely, he must see to making his business succeed; and for this end he must possess a sufficient capital at starting; and he must not, for any reasons of vanity or benevolence, or through laxness, pay higher wages than the state of the labour-market and the prospects of trade require. Of the secondary duties which next come in course—and which, be it remembered, arise not from the mastership, but from the neighbourship—the first is that of 'making his factory, and the processes carried on there, as healthy as care and sanitary science can render them.' 'This is the more incumbent upon him, as it is little likely to be thought of or demanded by his workmen. It is a topic on which his cultivated intelligence is almost sure to place him far ahead of them; and out of the superiority, as we have seen, springs the obligation.' Our reviewer adds the remark, that, 'in the minor workshops, and especially in the work-rooms of tailors and seamstresses, the employers are still, for the most part, unawakened to the importance and imperativeness of this class of obligations. The health of thousands is sacrificed from pure ignorance and want of thought.'

One mode of serving those who work for him, which the circumstances render appropriate, is to provide them with decent and comfortable dwellings. Much has been done in this way. 'In almost all country establishments, and in most of those in the smaller towns, the employers have been careful to surround their mills with substantial and well-built cottages, often with gardens attached to them, containing four rooms—kitchen, scullery, and two bedrooms: cottages which are let for rents which at once remunerate the owner and are easy for the occupier.' Even in large towns, where there are great local difficulties, something has been done by the building of Model Lodging-houses, and by the efforts of Societies for improving the Dwellings of the Poor. The writer specifies one of the greatest difficulties as existing in the working-people themselves: when provided with a variety of rooms for the separation of the various members of their families, they are very apt to defeat the whole plan by taking in lodgers, and contenting themselves with the filthy and depraving huddlement out of which their benevolent superiors endeavoured to rescue them. But it may be hoped that, by promoting only a few of the more intelligent and better-disposed to such improved dwellings, and thus setting up good examples, the multitude might in time be trained to an appreciation of the decency and comfort of ampler accommodation. Another wide field of usefulness is open to the employers in the establishment of schools, reading-rooms, baths, wash-houses, and the like.

It strikes us that the writer of this article is not true to his own principle in his view of the duties of the employer. We readily grant the duty of making his business prosperous and his workshops healthy. To fail in the latter particular especially, were not merely to fail in a duty, but to incur a heavy positive blame. But we cannot see how it is incumbent on the employer to provide houses for the persons who enter into the labour-contract with him, any more than to see that they get their four-pound loaf of a certain quality or price. It may be a graceful thing, a piece of noble benevolence, to enter into these building schemes, but it is also to go back into that system of vassalage out of which it is assumed that the relation of employer and employed is passing. Either the new buildings will pay as speculations, or they will not. If they are sure to pay, ordinary speculators will be as ready to furnish them as bakers are to sell bread. If the contrary be the case, why burden with the actual or probable loss the party in a simple contract which involves no such obligation? Clearly, there must be no great reason to expect a fair return for capital laid out in this way, or we should see building schemes for the working-classes taken up extensively by ordinary speculators. For employers, then, to enter into such plans, must in some degree be the result of benevolent feelings towards their men; and, so far, we must hold there is an acknowledgment on both sides that the system of vassalage is not yet extinct amongst us, and that the time for its extinction is not yet come.

If we look, however, at the entire condition of the working-people of England, we shall see that it acknowledges the same truth in some of its broadest features. When a time of depression comes, and factories do not require half of their usual number of hands, or even so many, it is never expected, on any hand, that the superfluous labourers are to maintain themselves till better times return. The employer is expected to keep them in his service, at least on short time, and at a reduced remuneration, although at a ruinous loss to himself. The workmen, though well aware of the contingency, make little or no provision against it, but calmly trust to the funds of their employers, or the contributions of the class to which these belong. Now, while such a practice exists, the relation of employer and employed is not that of independent contractors, but so far that of the feudal baron and his villeins, or of a chieftain and his 'following.' It is, in effect, a voluntarily maintained slavery on the part of the operatives—a habit as incompatible with political liberty as with moral dignity and progress, and therefore a sore evil in our state. Obviously, to perfect the system of independent contract, the workmen would need to redeem themselves from that condition of utter unprovidedness in which the great bulk of them are for the present content to live. Instead of what we see so prevalent now—a sort of hopelessness as to the benefits of saving—a dread to let it be known or imagined of them that they possess any store, lest it lead to a reduction of their wages (a foolish fallacy), or deprive them of a claim on their employer's consideration in the event of a period of depression (a mean and unworthy fear), we must see a dignified sense of independence, resting on the possession of some kind of property, before we can expect that even this stage in the Progress of Labour shall be truly reached.

But is it not just one of the essential disadvantages attending the contract system, or may we rather call it the system of weekly hire, that while it prompts the employer to frugality, by the obvious benefits to him of constant accumulation, it leaves the employed, as a mass, without a sufficient motive to the same virtue, and thus insures their being retained in that unprovidedness which forbids independence and true social dignity? On this point, were we a workman, we should be sorry to rest in an affirmative, or to allow it to slacken our exertions or sap our self-denial; because if there is a higher development of the labouring state in store for society, it can only be attained by the more speedy perfection of the contract state in the entire independence of the workman. The writer from whom we have quoted thinks, and with his sentiments we entirely concur, that 'society, in its progress towards an ideal state, may have to undergo modifications, compared with which all previous ones will seem trifling and superficial. Of one thing only can we feel secure—namely, that the loyal and punctual discharge of all the obligations arising out of existing social relations will best hallow, beautify, and elevate those relations, if they are destined to be permanent; and will best prepare a peaceful and beneficent advent for their successors, if, like so much that in its day seemed eternal, they too are doomed to pass away.'

ANECDOTE OF THE FIELD OF SHERRIFMUIR

My grandfather, William Wilson, was born in the farmhouse of Drumbrae, on the estate of Airthrey, at no great distance from the field of Sherrifmuir. At the rebellion of 1715, he was a lad of fifteen years of age, and learning that the rebels under the Earl of Mar had met with the royal forces under the Duke of Argyle in the neighbourhood, on the morning of Sunday the 12th November, while it was still dusk, he went to the top of a neighbouring hill named Glentye, from which the whole of the moor was discernible, and on which a number of country people were stationed, attracted to the spot, like himself, by curiosity. Being at no great distance from both armies, he could see them distinctly. The Highlanders, who observed no regular order, he compared to a large, dark, formless cloud, forming a striking contrast to the regular lines and disciplined appearance of the royal army. After observing them for some space of time, an orderly dragoon, sent by the Duke of Argyle, rode up to the spot where the spectators stood, warning them to remove from a position in which they were in as great danger as the combatants themselves. My grandfather accordingly returned home, listening with awe to the sharp report of musketry, intermixed with the booming of cannon, which now informed him that the battle had commenced. He had not been long in the house when a dismounted dragoon made his appearance, requesting to have his left wrist bandaged, so as to stop the blood. The hand had been cut off, and his horse killed under him, and he was on his way to Stirling to seek surgical aid. While his wishes were being complied with, he occupied himself in taking some refreshment, till one of the farm-servants came in and warned him that four armed Highlanders were coming down the hill in the direction of the house. The soldier, who had no doubt been taught at the Marlborough school, and served perhaps at Ramillies and Blenheim, immediately went out to the front of the house, which concealed him from his enemies. Presently, he heard by the footsteps that one was near, when he instantly presented himself at the gable, and shot the foremost Highlander with his carbine; then, seeing that the others came on in Indian file, with short distances between, he advanced to meet them, dropped the second with a bullet from his pistol, and cut down the third with his sword. The fourth, seeing the fate of his comrades, took to flight. After this wholesale execution, the dragoon, with perfect coolness, returned to the house, finished his repast, tranquilly said his thanks and adieus, and went off in the direction of Stirling. The next morning the country people were summoned to bury the dead. The ground was thickly covered with cranreuch, and life still remained in numbers of both armies, who begged earnestly for water. But what struck my grandfather particularly was, that the heads and bodies of a great many of the slain royalists were horribly mutilated by the claymores of the Highlanders; while on those of the Highlanders themselves nothing was observed but the wound which had caused their death.—Communicated by Mr Alexander Wilson, shoemaker, Stirling.

THINNESS OF A SOAP-BUBBLE

A soap-bubble as it floats in the light of the sun reflects to the eye an endless variety of the most gorgeous tints of colour. Newton shewed, that to each of these tints corresponds a certain thickness of the substance forming the bubble; in fact, he shewed, in general, that all transparent substances, when reduced to a certain degree of tenuity, would reflect these colours. Near the highest point of the bubble, just before it bursts, is always observed a spot which reflects no colour and appears black. Newton shewed that the thickness of the bubble at this black point was the 2,500,000th part of an inch! Now, as the bubble at this point possesses the properties of water as essentially as does the Atlantic Ocean, it follows that the ultimate molecules forming water must have less dimensions than this thickness.—Lardner's Handbook.

ENGLISH PLOUGHING

The following, written from England, is going the round of the papers, and is as true as the gospel, in my opinion. I have seen better ploughing here with a pair of oxen than in the old country with five horses; but Johnny won't learn. 'Lord! only look at five great, elephant-looking beasts in one plough, with one great lummokin fellow to hold the handle, and another to carry the whip, and a boy to lead, whose boots have more iron on them than the horses' hoofs have, all crawling as if going to a funeral! What sort of a way is that to do work? It makes me mad to look at 'em. If there is any airthly clumsy fashion of doin' a thing, that's the way they are always sure to git here. They're a benighted, obstinate, bull-headed people the English, that's the fact, and always was.' Well done, Jonathan—quite true!—From a private Letter from Boston.

JOHN BUNYAN AND MINCE-PIES

In No. 417 of this Journal it is chronicled that John Bunyan scrupled to eat mince-pies, because of the superstitious character popularly attached to them; but it would appear from an anecdote sent to us by a correspondent, that if this was true at all of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress, he must have received new light upon the subject at a later period of life. When he was imprisoned for preaching—so says the anecdote—in Bedford jail, a superstitious lady, thinking to entrap him, sent a servant to request his acceptance of a Christmas pie; whereupon Banyan replied: 'Tell your mistress that I accept her present thankfully, for I have learned to distinguish between a mince-pie and superstition.'

FOREST-TEACHINGS

There was travelling in the wild-woodOnce, a child of song;And he marked the forest-monarchsAs he went along.Here, the oak, broad-eaved and spreading;Here, the poplar tall;Here, the holly, forky-leaved;Here, the yew, for the bereaved;Here, the chestnut, with its flowers, and its spine-bestudded ball.Here, the cedar, palmy-branchèd;Here, the hazel low;Here, the aspen, quivering ever;Here, the powdered sloe.Wondrous was their form and fashion,Passing beautiful to seeHow the branches interlaced,How the leaves each other chased,Fluttering lightly hither, thither on the wind-arousèd tree.Then he spake to those wood-dwellers:'Ye are like to men,And I learn a lesson from yeWith my spirit's ken.Like to us in low beginning,Children of the patient earth;Born, like us, to rise on high,Ever nearer to the sky,And, like us, by slow advances from the minute of your birth.'And, like mortals, ye have uses—Uses each his own:Each his gift, and each his beauty,Not to other known.Thou, O oak, the strong ship-builder,For thy country's good,Givest up thy noble life,Like a patriot in the strife,Givest up thy heart of timber, as he poureth out his blood.'Thou, O poplar, tall and taper,Reachest up on high;Like a preacher pointing upward—Upward to the sky.Thou, O holly, with thy berries,Gleaming redly bright,Comest, like a pleasant friend,When the dying year hath end,Comest to the Christmas party, round the ruddy fire-light.'Thou, O yew, with sombre branches,And dark-veilèd head—Like a monk within the church-yard,When the prayers are said,Standing by the newly-buriedIn the depth of thought—Tellest, with a solemn grace,Of the earthly dwelling-place,Of the soul to live for ever—of the body come to nought,'Thou, O cedar, storm-enduring,Bent with years, and old,Standest with thy broad-eaved branches,Shadowing o'er the mould;Shadowing o'er the tender saplings,Like a patriarch mild,When he lifts his hoary head,And his hands a blessing shed,On the little ones around him—on the children of his child.'And the light, smooth-barkèd hazel,And the dusky sloe,Are the poor men of the forest—Are the weak and low.Yet unto the poor is givenPower the earth to bless;And the sloe's small fruit of down,And the hazel's clusters brown,Are the tribute they can offer—are their mite of usefulness.'When the awful words were spoken,"It is finishèd!"—When the all-loving heart was broken,Bowed the patient head;When the earth grew dark as midnightIn her solemn awe—Then the forest-branches allBent, with reverential fall—Bent, as bent the Jewish foreheads at the giving of the law.'But one tree was in the forestThat refused to bow;Then a sudden blast came o'er it,And a whisper lowMade the leaves and branches quiver—Shook the guilty tree;And the voice was: "Tremble everTo eternity:Be a lesson from thee read—He that boweth not his head,And obeyeth not his Maker, let him fear eternally!"'So thou standest ever shaking,Ever quivering with fear,For the voice is still upon thee,And the whisper near.Like the guilty, conscience-haunted;And the name for theeIs, "The tree of many thoughts"—Is, "The tree of many doubts;"And thy leaves are thoughts and doubtings—for thou art the sinner's tree.'Thou, O chestnut, richly branched,Standest in thy might,Rising like a leafy towerIn the summer light.And thy branches are fruit-laden,Waving bold and free;And the beams upon thee shedAre like blessings on thy head:Thou art strong, and fair, and fruitful—for thou art the good man's tree.'So, farewell, great forest-teachers:There is a spirit dwellsIn the veinings of each leaflet,In each flower's cells:Ye have each a voice and lesson,And ye seem to say:"Open, man, thine eyes to seeIn each flower, stone, and tree,Something pure and something holy, as thou passest on thy way."'F.C.W.

1

See Chambers's Journal, No. 226, New Series.

2

See Lays from Strathearn, 4to.