It is generally thought in the world that the medical knowledge acquired in the schools is all that is necessary to become a useful member of the council. The greater part of medical men themselves share this opinion; and on the strength of some precepts which they have collected from books on health and professions, they think themselves sufficiently instructed to decide on the instant the gravest questions, which can only be resolved by special studies.
A man may have exhausted medical literature; he may be an excellent practician at the sick-bed, a learned physician, a clever and eloquent professor; but all these acquirements, taken in themselves, are nearly useless in a Conseil de Salubrité like that of Paris; and if an occasion presents itself to make use of them, a very small number of persons suffice to apply them. To be really useful in the council, it is necessary to have an extended knowledge of natural philosophy, of the constitution of the soil on which Paris stands, and of the geology of neighbouring countries; it is necessary, above all, to know with exactness the action which trades may have on the health of those who exercise them, and the much more important action of manufactories of every species on plants, on men congregated in towns, and on animals. This knowledge, so important, of the action of manufactories and trades, is not to be acquired by ordinary study, or in the silence of the cabinet. It is not to be obtained without positive notions on the arts, and on the greater part of the processes peculiar to each trade. It requires habit and the frequenting of the places of work. In this particular, more even than with medicine, books are not a substitute for practice; and if there exist works on the subject, they are more likely to mislead than enlighten.
From what has been said, the necessity will be evident to introduce into the council those physicians who have made health, and particularly the public health, a special study; and to join with them chemists, and, above all, manufacturing chemists, because what would many of those persons, whose life has been passed in hospitals and the exclusive study of medicine, be before a steam engine? It is clear that they would often be deceived by those adroit and skilful manufacturers who would have an interest in concealing the truth.
Ramazzini is, as far as we know, the first who has treated professedly of the maladies produced by the fumes of tobacco. In his great work, De Morbis Artificum, he states that the workmen employed in the manufacture of tobacco are seized with great pains in the head, with vertigo, nausea, and perpetual sneezing; and that so great is the subtilty of this substance, that all the neighbourhood, particularly in summer, experience nausea. He adds, that those who work on tobacco lose their appetite, and that their breath is insupportable.
Fourcroy, after repeating in his translation of Ramazzini all the passages from this author, adds, in a note, several observations to prove the dangers of tobacco; such as, that a lady died from a cancer in the nose in consequence of taking too much snuff; another from a polypus in the œsophagus, which prevented her swallowing; another from frightful convulsions produced by sleeping in a room in which tobacco had been rasped. Fourcroy states, however, that there are some privileged persons who become accustomed to the action of tobacco, and experience no inconvenience from it.
Cadet-Gassicourt, in a memoir addressed to the prefect of police on the maladies incident to the trades carried on in Paris, says that the workmen occupied in the preparation of tobacco are subject to vomitings, colics, and acute and chronic affections of the chest; that they have often vertigo, bloody fluxes, and are addicted to drink.
Tourtelle, in his Elémens d’Hygiène, affirms that it is very dangerous to sleep in warehouses of tobacco; and he quotes a case, mentioned by Buchoz, of a young girl of five, who died in a short time from dreadful vomitings, occasioned by this sole cause.
Percy, in the article Chapeau, in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales, mentions, that some soldiers, exercising in the Champ-de-Mars in very warm weather, were overcome by syncope, which he attributes to some tobacco that these men had put in their caps.
In a new edition of Ramazzini and Fourcroy, by Patissier, we find the opinions of these authors without observation or comment. The editor is content to add, that those who have to do with tobacco are, in general, wasted, discoloured, yellow, and asthmatical.
Finally, Merat, in the article Tabac, in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales, says, that men engaged in the preparation of this substance are wasted, discoloured, yellow, asthmatic, subject to colic, diarrhœa, the bloody flux, but, above all, to vertigo, cephalalgia, muscular tremor, to true narcotism, and to diseases, more or less acute, of the chest. “All these assertions,” he continues, “are the fruit of my observations in the hospitals of Paris. Tobacco causes not only evils without number, but even death to those who prepare it. It deranges the memory of all who inhale it, and renders it less clear and entire; it weakens the tissues, especially the nervous tissues; it causes trembling of the limbs; diminishes strength; it produces emaciation, and even consumption, particularly among females; and sometimes begets entire imbecility.”
“We might multiply these quotations. The just celebrity of the authors who have furnished them gives to their opinion a force which imposes belief, and makes us reject every species of doubt. Let us recall, however, the maxim of Descartes; let us cease to believe the words of a master; let us dare to doubt for an instant, and, observing for ourselves, let us learn to form an opinion, based on what our own senses and judgment have taught us.”
Acting in this spirit, Parent Duchâtelet and D’Arcet carried on a minute investigation, in a vast manufactory of tobacco at Paris, containing 1,054 workmen. Not content with the results afforded by a single establishment, they directed questions to the nine other great manufactories of tobacco which France contains, and the answers were prepared by the physicians, surgeons, and officers of each establishment in conjunction. “The observations,” say MM. Duchâtelet and D’Arcet, “which compose this memoir, have been collected from a sum total of 4518 workmen. They appear to us so much the more valuable and conclusive, that they have been made simultaneously in the most opposite parts of France, by men who had not, and could not have, any connexion. There is thus no possibility to suspect the influence of a preconceived opinion; and if those to whom our inquiries were addressed are unanimous in their replies, and if these replies agree with our own observations, we shall be sure that we have arrived at the truth.”
The conclusions which followed from these widely extended researches were—
1. That in the greater part of the factories there was never known an example of an individual who could not accustom himself to the emanations of tobacco, and that in the rare cases where it proved injurious, it was always in a particular part of the process, which merely obliged the workman to be transferred to another department of the factory.
2. That all which has been said on the frequency of nausea, of vomitings, of diarrhœa, of colic, and of haemorrhages, is pure supposition. That it is so no less with respect to the headaches, sneezings, loss of appetite, foulness of breath, acute and chronic affections of the chest, cancers, and other similar diseases. What the same authors say on the discolouration of the skin of the workmen engaged in the preparation of tobacco, on the yellow hue of their complexion, their leanness, and emaciation, proves that they have not observed for themselves, or have only seen the exceptions to the rule, or have not compared this class of people with other workmen of the same town, who were engaged in occupations of a totally different kind.
3. That tobacco, far from producing, in those who prepare it, death and narcotism, does not even influence their nervous system; and that vertigo, syncope, muscular tremor, convulsions, and other like evils, which have been charged against it, have never existed in the manufactories, though the men sleep in the midst of the most subtil preparations, or, at least, are not to be attributed to that cause.
4. Not only is the tobacco without any effect on the health during the first years devoted to its preparation, it has not the least ill consequences in more advanced life. Feebleness and great age, or causes altogether accidental, have been the sole ground for dismissing the workmen.
5. There are some professions which, without destroying health in an evident manner, abridge life; but a great number of those who work on tobacco reach, and even surpass, the ordinary limit of human existence.
6. It is proved by innumerable facts, that the manufactories of tobacco are not in anywise injurious to the men, animals, or plants, which may exist in their vicinity.
It thus turns out, upon examination, that this much maligned substance is perfectly innocuous. “Yet what practitioner,” say MM. Parent Duchâtelet and D’Arcet, “who had not had occasion to visit the workshops and study their influence, would not be forced into belief by the imposing authorities we have quoted above; who of them would hesitate to regard as demonstrated opinions on which Ramazzini, Fourcroy, Cadet Gassicourt, Tourtelle, Percy, Patissier, Merat and others are unanimous, without a single person having uttered a contrary assertion? There are found among these authorities two members of the Royal Academy of Medicine, three members of the Academy of Sciences, two professors of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, one professor of the Faculty of Medicine of Strasbourg, two chemists, and two celebrated physicians—one French, the other Italian; in a word, six physicians and an apothecary, who held, and still hold, the most eminent places in the learned world. It is therefore evident that it is of the highest importance that trades and professions should be investigated differently from what they have hitherto been; and this importance daily increases, because of the progress and extension of arts and manufactures.”
The labouring classes are obliged to live in houses almost always dilapidated, insufficient, or unhealthy. Such is the lot of the poor man in all countries: the force of circumstances, the hard law of necessity, compel it. Yet, if it is impossible to remedy completely this state of things, may we not approximate to it, by building houses for every grade of the lower orders—not only of the honest poor, but of the debased and depraved? It appears to me that these houses would have a double advantage;—they would diminish the causes of public insalubrity, and offer to the honest and economical workman the means to procure a residence equal to his necessities, and capable of producing in him the taste for retirement and domestic peace so favourable to morals. It is especially in this last point of view that the amelioration of the dwellings of the poor and laborious class is to be ranked among the preservatives against vicious habits.
Rent being one of the most important and indispensable domestic expenses, the father of a family, pressed by other wants of the first necessity, naturally seeks the least costly habitation. Now, these habitations exist only in certain quarters, and in certain streets of those quarters: they are old, ruined, and filthy. The proprietors, in order to tenant them, let the lodgings very low, and thus attract the poorer families. If these lodgings were healthy, if they were sufficient for all the members of the family, there would be no room for censure; but they are foul, badly lighted, and neither air-tight nor water-tight. They are small, and as parents and children live and sleep in the same room, the overcrowding is both a cause of unhealthiness, and an offence against good morals. Moreover, the bad state and filth of the passages, privies, and sinks, give rise to infectious exhalations, which vitiate the air of these humble abodes, and affect the health of their inhabitants in a manner so much more mischievous that the greater part of them work all the day in crowded and ill-ventilated shops.
It would be worthy of a wise administration to remedy this dangerous complication. The task is doubtless difficult; but why not grapple with it boldly, instead of allowing to subsist in Paris, without any effort to destroy them, so many centres of infection which reduce to the level of the lowest animals the unfortunate beings who seek in them a retreat for the night.
Although the lodgings are not all repulsive, they are all alike open to criticism. Some offend by overcrowding, others by the mode of sleeping; others, lastly, by the absence of all ventilation, and even by a total want of air. Overcrowding is an evil which prevails in all the lodgings of the lowest class, and which aggravates the mischief resulting from the other inconveniences to which they are subject. The twenty-five or thirty thousand workmen employed in house-building, who flock to Paris every year from certain departments, congregate in chambers, and sleep there during the season. Many of these places are kept by countrymen of their own, who attract them by their known probity, and the kindness they entertain for them. These chambers abound principally in the quarter of the Hôtel-de-Ville for the masons, and in the Faubourg Saint-Martin for the carpenters. These excellent workmen, by an exception more peculiar to them than to any others, look only to economy. They bargain with the lodging-house keeper, so as to obtain for six francs a month, besides the room, the washing of a shirt a-week, and a mess of soup every day, for which they themselves provide the bread. All that is not devoted to their slender wants is laid by for the support of their family, or the increase of their little patrimony. The police unanimously testify to the order and concord which reign in their chambers, as well as to their good conduct abroad. Is it not mournful that these fine fellows should sleep thus piled up in little garrets? Accustomed to work in the open air, the smallness of their rooms is more trying to them than to any others. Thus typhus fever is common among them, and sometimes attacks a whole chamber.
The overcrowding and deficient ventilation are still more injurious to workmen employed in manufactures. They pass every day from an infected lodging into a shop which is usually as unwholesome, and they are thus predisposed to contract readily contagious maladies.
Of all the lower orders, the chiffonniers inhabit the most infected and disgusting lodgings. It is vain to expect to descend into the lowest ranks of society,—inequality always appears somewhere. Even the chiffonniers have their notables. There are some a little more economical, a little more raised than the mass, and who enjoy a certain comfort. Those the most elevated occupy one or two small rooms, which they hire for themselves and their families; others possess a pallet, which serves them to sleep on, in the chamber of which they are one occupant among many. But this possession is more often collective than personal; and although shared, it does not fail to excite the envy of the poor wretches who lie in a species of trough, on rags, or on handsful of straw, with which the room is strewed. The police charged with the surveillance of the lodgings inhabited by the chiffonniers give an incredible picture of them. Each occupant keeps by him his basket, sometimes full of filth—and what filth! These savages do not hesitate to comprise dead animals in their gleanings, and pass the night by the side of this stinking prey. When the police go to these places, they experience a suffocating feeling, bordering on asphyxy. They order the windows to be opened when they can be opened, and the severe representations they address to the lodging-house keepers on this horrible mixture of human beings with decayed animal matter does not move them. They answer, that their lodgers are accustomed to it as well as themselves. A trait of manners peculiar to the chiffonniers, and which might be called their pastime, consists in rat-catching in the courts of the houses which they frequent. They entice the rats by the aid of certain substances attached to the rags they gather in the streets. With this view they put heaps of rags near the holes in the walls, and when they think that the rats are buried in the rags, they let loose into the court dogs trained for the purpose, and, in the twinkling of an eye, they make themselves masters of the rats, of which they eat the flesh and sell the skin.
The lodgings which receive at night the scum of society are thorough pest-houses. Those even which are not frequented by chiffonniers become, by the crowding of the inhabitants and their filthy habits, dangerous centres of infection. There are some chambers which contain as many as nine beds, separated by small passages hardly wide enough to get through, and these beds are often occupied by two persons who do not know each other, and have never seen one another. Difference of sex is no obstacle to these nocturnal and fortuitous cohabitations, although the police neglect nothing to prevent disorders. Among the female apartments there is one which is famous for the picture of decrepitude and abjectness which it presents. The women who occupy it are old drunkards, of whom several are suspected of theft. The spectacle of these animated mummies has something sepulchral.
One must bring to social anatomy a serious spirit of investigation, to form a just idea of the population which lives in the concealed recesses of society. The imagination, however fertile and daring, could never reach, in this matter, to the height of the reality: there is a character, a physiognomy, a strangeness, which it is necessary to have seen in order to assume the responsibility of an historian. Let no one tax with romance the traits of manners nor the description of places contained in this chapter. However softened by the reserve I have imposed on myself, they are not less true at bottom. I have sacrificed the coarseness of the outline and colouring out of respect to decency. It is the only infidelity of which I accuse myself. It is impossible not to feel the necessity to provide an efficacious remedy for a state of things so contrary to the rights of humanity and civilization.[57]
There exist in Paris some thousands of individuals who have no domicile—who sleep to-day in one place, the next day in another—and who have recourse every evening to those houses where, for a payment usually very moderate, they can at least obtain a place to lie in, and a covering for their heads. It is not only strangers living temporarily in Paris who lodge in this manner; a mass of workmen, mostly single men, who have not stirred from the capital for ten, fifteen, and twenty years, prefer this kind of life to the occupation of a separate chamber. It may be affirmed, without fear of contradiction, that this population comprises all that is most drunken and debased in society. It is composed of people without foresight, and without a home, living from day to day, and trusting to the hospitals in the case of sickness or infirmity. It is in the lowest places in these disgusting haunts in which a person is lodged for six, four, and even for two sous, that the greater part of the prostitutes reside, who can scarcely, after purchasing food, lay aside from their daily gains the trifling sum necessary to avert sleeping in the open air. I have visited some of these lodgings, and it was not without a feeling of pain that I have seen human creatures reduced to live in such places, and that in the capital of France. To give a just idea of these abodes, I will extract some passages from the remarkable report which the inspector-general of furnished lodgings addressed to the prefect of police at the time of the cholera. It tells of nothing but houses in ruin, of straw for beds in a state of putrefaction, of darkness, of infectious smells, of filth without example. These are some of the passages:—
“Rue ——, No. —. This house is remarkable for its excessive dirt. It is a genuine centre of infection. It is inhabited solely by thieves, smugglers, beggars, and prostitutes. It is impossible to enter without being suffocated.
“Rue ——, No. —. This house fixes the attention by its construction and filth. There are no beds, except some loathsome pallets; animal remains, intestines, and the refuse of meals, are rotting in the court; all the chambers look on a corridor completely deprived of air and light; the sinks and the privies of every story are loathsome from ordure and fecal matter. It is the hideous abode of vice and misery.
“Rue ——, No. —. The court of this house is four feet square, and is full of dung; the chambers, crowded with occupants, open on it; the privies, dilapidated to the fifth floor, let the fecal matter fall upon the staircase, which is covered with it to the bottom. Many of the rooms have no other aperture than the door which opens upon this staircase. The house is the resort of sharpers, of thieves, of the most filthy prostitutes, and of everything that is most abject both of men and women.
“Rue du Faubourg ——, No. —. A house occupied from top to bottom by chiffonniers, mendicants, street-organists, street-walkers, and Italian boys, who go about with animals. All these sleep upon rags picked from the street, and of which there is a depôt on the ground-floor. More complete abjectness it is impossible to witness.
“Rue ——, No. —. This house is the resort of all that is most abased. It is exclusively inhabited by thieves, prostitutes, discharged criminals, beggars, vagabonds, gamesters, and every species of rogues. The greatest filth reigns everywhere; the windows are made of oiled paper instead of glass; the rooms are infected; at each story the ordure of the privies flows upon the staircase.”[58]
Another French writer, M. Frégier, has given the following description of the external appearance of these abodes:—“The streets, not, at farthest, more than eight feet wide, are dirty, and flanked by lofty houses, four stories high, which are blackened by time. The height of the houses renders the streets gloomy and damp, and the houses themselves are dark, particularly on the ground-floor. Spirit shops, beer shops, and low eating houses abound. The gloom of these shops, joined to the repulsive physiognomy of the streets, infuse a secret horror into the visitor who is led there by the spirit of observation, and who knows that the greater part of the shops are the habitual resort of the lowest prostitutes, and of rogues that live in the neighbourhood. The lodgings and places of dissipation frequented by this part of the population are worthy, from their filth, of the streets and quarters in which they are situated.”[59]
Our inquiries have led us more particularly into the most populous and miserable districts into which the working classes are continually crowding, in proportion as new and elegant buildings have encroached upon the districts within the heart of the capital, formerly almost exclusively occupied by those classes. We have visited successively, in the district of Minimes, the rue des Pignons, and de la Samaritane, the cul-de-sac des Minimes, the alley des Prêtres, les rues de l’Epris, du Bourreau, de la Oventail, &c.; in the district de la Chapelle, les rues des Ménages, du Radro, de la Rasière, des Rats, du Renard, &c.; in the district de la rue d’Anderlecht, la rue des Navets, and the alley au Lait. We entered into a great number of the dwellings. We not only inquired, but also inspected, in order that we might ascertain the truth of the statements which were made to us. In now presenting the results of this inquiry, we do not hesitate to call your attention to the very important facts which have been gathered, at the same time that we ask your indulgence for the imperfect manner in which we have been able to perform the duties committed to our zeal and exertions.
The misery of the localities we have visited struck us immediately, from their appearance of uniform poverty. The streets and alleys, at all times dirty and ill-paved, in times of rain or thaw had the appearance of a pestilential mire; the water had no means of running off, and the smallness of the passages, the absence of courts or gardens, the crowding of families, and the detestable modes of building, rendered all circulation of air or ventilation quite impossible. The most indispensable conveniences were entirely wanting in most of the houses. They had no pumps, nor privies, nor sewers, except one in common. Indeed, we saw seventy houses that were provided with only one pump or one privy for the whole of that number.
If you enter the houses, the spectacle which is there presented to your view is, if anything, still more wretched. If the arrangement and order to be seen in some of the rooms recall the proverbial neatness of the Flemish, on the other hand, the houses occupied by large families, the alleys, the passages, and the stairs, are generally disgustingly filthy; the brush of the whitewasher never passes along them, or if they are ever cleaned, it is only to attract new tenants, who soon restore them to their primitive dirtiness. The steepness of the stairs, which, indeed, are often more like ladders, must be a perpetual cause of accidents, especially to the young children. The space occupied by a family is generally much too confined for each of the members to receive the quantity of fresh air necessary for the preservation of health. Hence their appearance is generally that of suffering and of bad condition. The children are pale and emaciated, and bear all the visible signs of premature suffering. The number of those who are rickety and scrofulous is considerable, and the mortality amongst the children and the aged exceeds all the most unfavourable averages. As we pass along these receptacles of misery, we feel astonished to see so few old people; an early death has carried them beyond their wretchedness: and if inquiries are made of parents, there are few who have not lost one or more children. It would be important to compare the proportion of deaths in the families of the rich and of the indigent. There is little doubt that this comparison would prove that misery, the want of proper air and space, the occupations of these people, and privations of every sort, sensibly diminish the period of life of the working classes.
In these wretched habitations everything is sacrificed generally to the rapacity of the proprietor. Every repair which affects the health or the comfort of the tenant merely, and that is not necessary to prevent the total ruin of the dwelling, is entirely neglected. What is the use of cleaning the walls for people whose habits are filthy? Why make windows for the entrance of air and light, or repair a sewer, or cleanse an alley covered with stagnant water, for people who are accustomed to pestilential smells? It is what a proprietor can never understand. Do not believe, however, that these dreadful abodes are rented at their proper value. On the contrary, the unfortunate people obliged to live in these houses, because all better ones are closed against them, in reality pay a higher rent than for a wholesome room in a good house.
It is one important duty of a State to provide abundant supplies of water for its people; and this duty is based on the impossibility, in many cases, for individuals by their own exertions to procure even the barest necessary quantity of water, and also that it requires much skill to distinguish that which is of a good quality from that which is injurious. The State ought, therefore, to provide water of the best quality in sufficient abundance, and to arrange also for its most extensive distribution: this is often attended with great difficulties and with much expense, if the district is naturally ill-supplied with springs of water; or where a town, being large, requires more water than its own surface springs, or those of the immediate neighbourhood, can supply. Without maintaining that the example given us by ancient nations, of munificent expenditure in the laying out of aqueducts, &c., is one which we, therefore, are obliged to follow, yet it may be demanded of the State, that it should provide water, at least so far as the absolute wants of life require, by aqueducts or pipes, or at least by cisterns, laid down at the public expense. For the sake of the poorer classes, it does not seem advisable that this duty should be handed over to a private company.[60]
An injudicious economy on this point affects most injuriously the habits of cleanliness, and consequently the health of the lower classes. Water is properly distributed when every district is provided with an abundance of springs or wells. Loss of time, danger of fire, difficulties in the time of contagious diseases, are the consequences of the wells being few in number, even though each one should furnish a large stream of water.
It is a well-known fact, that locality has a great effect on the life and health of the inhabitants, and especially according as it offers the means of proper circulation of air or not. Thus, elevated situations are generally more healthy than places shut in by hills. In towns, those parts which are traversed by broad streets, are always more healthy than those which are so closely covered with houses as never to be properly ventilated, or where the sun can never penetrate to dry up the moisture; but an ill-drained situation is the most injurious to health.
The healthiness of a whole town is often essentially improved by the formation of a single sewer or drain: in other places, it requires very extended operations to produce the same effect. We may include amongst the various influences, the ditches surrounding the cities filled with stagnant water; by draining these, not only a purer air is gained, but also a fertile piece of land. It ought to be remarked here, however, that this work of draining water, and the removal of the mud, ought to be done in the cold season; if not, dangerous fevers will in all probability be the consequence.
The foul air arising from marshy land, when that is necessary, as in the cultivation of rice, is an evil for which there is no remedy.[61]
Another means of improving the healthiness of a town, is by proper attention to the breadth, and to the direction of the streets in all the new quarters of the town. The streets ought to intersect, each other at right angles, and not at too great distances: the direction of the streets, also, should not run due north and south, as in that case the streets lying parallel in one direction, would be scorched by the sun, and without any shade during mid-day; whilst the streets running at right angles to these, would never be warmed by a ray of sunshine.
The health of towns would also be much improved by the prohibition of all cellars as dwelling-houses, by legislative enactments as to the elevation of the ground-floor of dwelling-houses above the level of the streets, also as to the construction of proper conveniences attached to dwelling-houses; and by regulations with regard to the proper size of windows: also by regulations regarding the strictest cleanliness of the streets, as this is more important in its effects on the health generally, than even the situation of a town, or attention to its mode of building. By attention to it, Holland is inhabitable; by the neglect of it, Cairo and Constantinople are the very hot-beds of the plague.
The first means to attain this cleanliness is by a proper paving of all the streets, in order to lay the district dry. Without this, the streets are either a stream of mud, or a sea of dust; in both cases equally injurious to the health. It is often expensive to get a hard material for the purpose of pavement; but when obtained, the expense of keeping it in repair is much less. When it is possible, the streets should be kept clean, by turning on them a stream of water,—the drains being always kept well open to receive it afterwards. Every inhabitant should be obliged to keep the portion of the street clean before his own door. The refuse of the town ought to be conveyed away, at the expense of the town, to some part of the country, removed from all dwelling-houses.
At the meeting of the 7th of June, Dr. Mauthner sent in a report on the condition of the children employed in the cotton-works, in which he gave an exposition of the evidence, partly of his own experience and partly on the reports of others, of the moral and physical evils which the various branches of manufacture bring with them, and proposals were put into the hands of the owners of the mills for preventing the evils so strongly denounced.
The learned meeting determined to appoint a special commission to inquire into so grave and important a matter. This body held its first meeting on the 29th of July, at which our much-esteemed chairman presided, and I had the honour to be commissioned to inquire into that part of the report of Dr. Mauthner which treats more particularly of the effects of the cotton manufactures.
Before I enter upon the discussion on the special points of inquiry, permit me to lay before you a few general remarks on the nature of our inquiry, and of the condition of the people employed in the cotton-works, more particularly of Lower Austria. It must first be conceded that the condition of the children working in the factories is closely connected with the condition of the rest of the working population, and cannot be considered separately. Our president felt the necessity of considering them in connexion throughout the various parts of the inquiry which he had proposed to himself; and, before the commencement of our inquiry, it was generally agreed that our attention should extend also to the condition of the adult workpeople.
We could not conceal from ourselves that we were undertaking a subject at once the most important and the most delicate,—an inquiry which might disclose to the general public that the unhappy signs of the times were to be seen in our affairs, and which also, without cause, might alarm a very excitable class as to their own condition. English and French journals are full of the most striking descriptions of the physical and moral evils of the manufacturing population; and not without ground, as we learn from the various commissions of inquiry appointed by the respective governments. With your permission I will quote a passage from a report which the Commission de l’Intendance Sanataire du Nord drew up in the year 1832, and which unfortunately has not been found exaggerated even in later periods. It is word for word as follows:—
“No one without personal inspection can form any conception of the dwellings of our workpeople: the neglect in which they live brings evils with it which makes their misery unbearable, indeed almost fatal. Their poverty, by the negligence and demoralization which produces it, becomes almost destructive. In their dark cellars, in their cellar-like rooms, the air is never changed; it is perfectly poisonous. The walls are covered with filth. If a bed is ever found, it is always filthy, and made up of foul and rotten straw. It is covered with a coarse and dirty rag, the colour or material of which can hardly be distinguished; it is a miserable threadbare coverlet. The dirty and worm-eaten pieces of furniture and utensils are thrown about without any order; the closed windows scarcely allow any light to pass through their smoky panes, many of which are stuffed with paper, and (it will hardly be credited) they not unfrequently nail the window fast in order that it may run no risk of being broken in the opening and shutting of it. The floors of their houses are dirtier than the rest of the house, covered with ordure, ashes, rotten straw, and all that has been brought in from the filthy streets outside; it is a receptacle for every kind of vermin. The air is no longer fit to breathe; one feels in these abodes stunned with an overpowering and horrible stench, a smell of excrement, filth of every kind, and of human beings. And the inhabitant of these abodes, in what state is he? His clothes are in rags, and tossed on. His hair has never known a comb, and is covered with the material with which he is working; and his skin, though filthy, is yet distinguishable on his face, but on the other part of his body, concealed by his rags, there are accumulations of every kind. Nothing is so fearfully dirty as the old and wrinkled of these demoralised creatures. Their abdomens distended, their limbs distorted, their backs bent forward, their legs twisted, their necks scarred and full of swellings, their fingers festered, their joints swollen and weak, and, lastly, these unfortunate creatures are tormented, we may say eaten up, with vermin of all kinds.”
These descriptions were given by M. de Chambert, Boglli, Brigaudet, Kulman, and Themistocles Lestibuwers. I shall be excused for having given this long and disgusting extract, as it shows clearly what was the state and the evils which could call forth those general and loud complaints, and which made it a duty for government to take the matter into consideration. The whole picture is too wretched to be brought into the most distant comparison with the condition of the poorest of our workpeople, who are in general well fed and decently clothed, and show in the furniture of their cleanly-kept houses the fruits of their small earnings. They, together with their children, enjoy excellent health, and in general deserve the character of being a sober, industrious, orderly, tractable, and attached class. But a large population of workpeople, living entirely on the daily labour of their hands, wanting many things in external circumstances which, to the eye accustomed to luxury and abundance, are considered indispensable, under the continual pressure of strict regulations and continuous labour, is not a very enviable picture to the superficial observer, and often gives occasion to many unfounded lamentations and ill-timed apprehensions, if not to one-sided measures, which are, however, powerless against the stern necessity of supporting thousands of human beings, which are disturbing when they shake the established order of things, and are destructive when they make a happy and quiet class of workpeople discontented with their lot.
The cotton-works in Lower Austria, which are almost all situated within a circle of a few miles around Vienna, employ about 10,000 hands, for whose accommodation solid and roomy dwellings have been erected for the most part at the same time as the works were established.
Most of the mills have not only a considerable number of dwellings for the married workers, but large, separate sleeping-rooms for the unmarried of both sexes, which are provided with beds, and lighted and warmed at the expense of the mill. When the larger and older mills were built, there was erected for the boys and girls a so-called children’s house, in which, at that time, the children were provided at the expense of the mill with food, clothes, and instruction, and who were bound by certain regulations issued by the government, and were placed under the inspection of the respective clergyman and physician of the district. After the works were extended, they found they were obliged to give up these institutions; and they now drew the requisite number of hands, partly from the descendants of their own people, and partly from the children of the country people, who, in the course of time, becoming informed as to the condition of the children in the factories, send their own children after they are too big for home employment and to go to school, to work in the mills for a certain number of years; after which, however, they generally return to their agricultural labour. On the confines of Hungary, on a Sunday evening, hundreds of young, robust, and healthy workpeople, carrying with them the provisions for the week, may be seen coming to the mill, whence, on the Saturday evening, they may be seen going in merry groups carrying their wages back to their own homes. For these, and all who do not live with their parents, decent and proper rooms are provided, sometimes in that which used to be the children’s house, or in other places equally under inspection.
The employment in cotton mills, and more especially of the children, requires attention, and a certain quickness or sleight of hand more than any bodily exertion. The whole of the hands are employed in roomy and light apartments, which in summer are well ventilated, and in winter warmed with great regularity, and there is nothing in the material, nor in the processes of the manufacture, which can be injurious to the health. The hours of work, which are generally from four to five in the morning to seven or eight in the evening, are interrupted by three meal-times; and on Saturday the mill is closed from three to four hours earlier. The weekly wages of boys and girls are from 3 to 5 florins, and those of the adults from 6 to 18, besides a house free; and it is not only sufficient for their wants, but gives them also the means of laying by a little saving, examples of which are not unfrequent.
Under these circumstances the health is not, and cannot be, anything else than extremely good; the large number of old who are still robust and in employment, the experience and evidence of all the physicians who practise amongst the mill population, the result of the reports of the district physician, but above all, the healthy state they were in during several epidemics, and also the small proportion of deaths as seen in the parish register, all afford the most striking evidence of the fact of their healthiness. Every noxious circumstance must undoubtedly bear with it the traces of its evil; street riots, mobs of workpeople, and excesses of all kinds, breaches of the law and criminal acts, numerous and open concubinage, large numbers of illegitimate children (in many manufacturing towns amounting to one-fourth of the whole births), and, lastly, the large numbers of entirely destitute and disabled workpeople who seek for assistance from the parish and from all charities; these are the melancholy signs which mark in England and France the state of the manufacturing population.
In the course of 40 years, during which the Austrian manufactures have arisen so near to the capital, and have been well watched by the police, such moral and physical deterioration of so large a population could not have escaped notice; but I ask where are those incontrovertible signs which an hospital or a workhouse more frequently attended or applied to by the mill population than by any other poor class of the community would be? where are those prevailing diseases? where is the increased mortality? and, lastly, where are the traces of moral and mental degradation? Certainly it would be unjust to throw the stone at those who have linked with the unavoidable demands of business circumstances which might be measured by the scale of a more fortunate and independent existence.
Dr. Mauthner states, “that the weakness of the body and constitution of the children employed in the great cotton-works in the neighbourhood is very striking.
“1st. That the race of men employed in those establishments is much less robust than that of the peasantry of the neighbouring villages.
“2nd. That bauchscropheln and scrophuleuse consumption are not uncommon; that inflammatory diseases are very rare.
“3rd. That premature old age and early death is the common fate.”
Even supposing that since the establishment of the spinning-works there could have been created a peculiar race of people, still the supposition could not prove more than that the constitution of the workers had been modified by their employment and their mode of living, since experience shows that the duration of life is not shorter than that of the other working classes.
2dly. That the above-mentioned diseases principally affect children of the earliest age, the former about the fifth year, the last about the seventh year; and that it is to be premised that the children who never work in the mill before their ninth year, come sometimes with the disease already developed upon them. The children of the mill hands are, indeed, less attacked by this disease than the children of the poor agricultural labourer, because they are generally better housed and clothed than these. That inflammatory diseases seldom appear is no sign of a weak constitution, since, on the one hand, these seldom appear amongst children; and, on the other hand, they do show themselves amongst the adults, whenever there are external influences and inducing circumstances to produce them; and all the physicians practising in the cotton-works agree in stating that, with the exception of rheumatic affections, there are no peculiar forms of disease amongst the cotton-spinning population.
3rdly. As to the statement of premature old age and early deaths, it is one which is contradicted by all the experience of half a century. The registers of deaths made by the clergymen of the parishes give the most exact information as to the proportion of deaths. The results of these are,
1st. That the number of deaths, especially amongst the manufacturing people, is proportionally less than amongst the agricultural labourers;
2nd. That, as amongst other classes, the deaths are the most numerous of children under two years;
3rd. That between the age of 12 and 16 there are the fewest deaths;
4th. That there are a great many between 60 and 70.
The means proposed by Dr. Mauthner for obtaining a better physical and moral state are,
1st. Shortening the hours of labour;
2ndly. Interrupting the hours of labour by school instruction: on both which points there could be no discussion, since these are already provided for by the law.
With regard to the long working hours, which certainly appear very oppressive to the unemployed spectator, long habit has accustomed the workers to them, and they do not produce any perceptible injury, more especially as the people are paid in proportion to the time they are employed. It is to be remembered that there remain eight hours for rest, none of which are spent in going and coming to their homes, as is the case in other countries, as, for instance, in Mulhausen, where one-third of the workers live from one to two miles from the mill.
It is not during the hours of well-regulated and orderly employment that there is any danger of demoralization, but during the leisure hours. Villermé, in his valuable work on the Etat Physique et Morale des Ouvriers, states that the moral and physical deterioration of the manufacturing class in Rheims, where they only work from 10 to 12 hours, is most striking. The hours of work being ended, the people fill the taverns and the streets with prostitutes, whilst the workers from the numerous manufactories of Sedan, who work 15 hours, are sober, moral, and orderly. He mentions also that few manufactories employ so many robust hands as the spinning works at Sedan.
3dly. To employ more than one spinner to attend to a new spinning machine which turns a greater number of spindles.
It would in general be well to trust to the manufacturer the number of workers he should employ, as his interest compels him to use a requisite number of hands. In this particular case it ought to be stated that, owing to the progress of machinery, the spinner having 800 or 1000 spindles has less labour than formerly, when he had only 300 spindles to attend to.
4thly. That the children, and mill hands generally, should be kept in good order, by sick funds and savings’ banks.
In most works there is established a kind of sick fund, to which each hand contributes weekly from 1 to 2 kr. for every guilder they earn; or there are voluntary contributions to those who are invalided; or, lastly, when they receive medical advice gratis, they have this fund to expend in medicines. If this fund is sufficient to assist the sick, it is not enough to support those in old age, and they must of necessity depend on that help which they are entitled to as being the fathers of families; and indeed every country mill can count many families amongst the workers in which an aged father or mother is supported by their children.
The formation of regulations, binding on all and applicable to all cases, as to the employment of children in mills, together with all other regulations which affect the internal arrangements of a manufactory, is incontestibly attended with many difficulties, and indeed one might say with insuperable obstacles. French legislation has employed itself three years with this object. The law has appeared, and we have read it in our public journals. In the leading principles it does not seem to contain anything but what has been in practice in Austria for many years, though of our proceedings in regard to minute details may be said what the minister of finance prognosticated in the Chamber of Peers on the 31st May, 1837, when he said, “At different times government has felt the necessity of a similar law. It has occupied itself with it, and made every inquiry on the subject, but the law itself presents extreme difficulties: many countries have attempted one; England has even passed a law on this subject, but it is not observed.”
The interests of the children, it is repeated, have been protected by the regulations issued by the government of Lower Austria, the last of which were issued on July 16, 1839. For the moral and mental development of the labourer in general there is only one great panacea: this lies in the extension of trade, in the security and steadiness of employment, and in the power of the labourer to maintain himself and his children comfortably and respectably with the work of his own hands.
It is to be hoped that our manufacturers will progress in the gradual and prudent course which is equally removed from stupid and blind adherence to old things, as from the spirit of hasty imitation and the headlong pursuit of novelties. We shall then not have to fear the creation of a dissolute and depraved class of workpeople, as we see in other countries. For the rest, trust to the wise care of our government—trust to the sound sense and excellent disposition of our labourers—and, above all, trust something to the humanity and to the opinions of the manufacturers of Austria themselves.