It would not be until the twentieth century that we would begin to feel the full benefit of the educational and other good foundations laid in the nineteenth.—Author, chap. i.
In the twentieth century we began to reap substantial fruit from the seed sown in the century before. We had now, for example, the effects of the great education measure; for early in the twentieth century the last of the uneducated masses of the old society had died out. We have now, therefore, to see how universal education comported itself. No doubt the evil as well as the good tendencies of human nature still remained to society; but the field for the former was gradually narrowed, while that for the other was proportionately enlarged, by the ameliorated conditions of all life and business work. But before selecting some few of the prominent illustrative instances of the century, let me give a striking episode of its commencement, which, however, I am happily able to describe as only
A Canadian Fisheries Question is once more upon us. The "Dominion" had by this time consolidated its authority over the entire vast area of British North America, and the colonial tone, on this old and irritating question, was again none of the weakest. The Home Government, even when hardly approving colonial inflexibility, felt disposed, at this particular conjuncture, to show that a colony's quarrel was their own, seeing that certain Cassandras had been predicting that the empire was to be gradually sundered for want of a thorough political union. The Imperial Government would therefore take this good opportunity of practically showing them that they were mistaken. But in despatching, for this special purpose, a full imperial regiment, to be stationed on the Dominion frontier, the susceptibilities of the United States were carefully guarded by explanatory assurances that nothing beyond this imperial formality was meant. The States accepted the assurances, but at the same time despatched a like full regiment of their own to meet the other at the frontier. This move and counter-move did not tend to mend matters, and there was free talk on both sides of even immediate levies in the rear to support each regiment.
The two regiments at length hove in sight of each other. Each had marched forward because the other was marching, and each by calculated pace to meet the other at the frontier. When within speaking distance, both sides instinctively and simultaneously halted, each ready for battle, and each grimly surveying the other. It seemed as though the slightest impetuosity or indiscretion would precipitate mortal international combat. There had been, indeed, strict injunctions to either side not to begin an attack. But this was not known until afterwards.
At this critical conjuncture, an old man stepped forth from the British side. He was the senior in years in his regiment, and was looked up to accordingly. Walking up to the dividing line, which was there still clearly cut in the primitive sod, he stood across it, and stretching his arms to both sides cried out, in a strong clear voice, intensified by evident emotion, "The Old Mother's call is to all her children."
The effect was electrical. The soldiers on either side at once rushed forward to the common boundary, where, throwing down their arms in an indiscriminate heap, they each cordially grasped the other's hand. All danger was thenceforth at an end; and in the subsequent official arrangements each side seemed only to vie with the other in yielding, to the now recognized common brotherhood, the points upon which they had before so seriously differed.
The moral must accompany other progress.—Author, passim.
The Club, in the wide generality of its use, was specially a nineteenth-century feature of our town life. But the twentieth century had not only kept up, but even much extended and improved the club features of its predecessor. Not only was our country's population greatly increased, but, from the circumstances first alluded to, the proportions of its educated, well-mannered, clubbable element, were of necessity increased in a much greater ratio. While the clubs of that time took a great membership extension, together with accompanying palatial accommodations, all which were successfully realized, chiefly by resigning their catering difficulties to strictly professional hands, and while they advanced also as centres of art and science, I am at present more interested, as to club life, in certain features of social advance which it also presented. A society owes more than, perhaps, it usually thinks or confesses, to the honest straightforward purpose, sound natural feeling, and good common sense of those masses of the people, who, with proper ambition, are ever surging up into its ranks with the world's progress. Thus we have had more just, humane, and suitable laws; and thus, too, we had, in the enlarged society of the twentieth century, an improved public moral sentiment, and improved club life.
Where there is already the predisposition, incidents, small in themselves, may lead to great results, as when a small trigger fires off a huge gun. One of our grand clubs of this time furnished another illustration. An altercation had arisen between two of its members, ending in a personal assault, the assaulting party pleading in defence that he had been provoked by ungentlemanly bearing. The case, famous as it afterwards became, was simply this. The complainant had been accosted, in gay hilarity, by the other, in order to introduce the friend and fellow-member on his arm, who, as he explained, was aspiring to be the very pattern of virtue; for whereas he was wont, in younger and stronger days, to seduce a woman once a month, now that age's infirmities began to tell, he was content with only once a quarter, and by-and-by would be so correct and pure, that ordinary mortals must hide their heads. He of whom all this was told laughed most heartily; it was, as he remarked, such a capital joke. But the other, to whom the said joke was addressed, at once turned his back; and, when again confronted for an explanation, only repeated the offence. Thereupon followed the angry cane over the offending back.
The magistrate's settlement of the matter next morning, with the usual fine, and the usual parental admonitions, went for nothing. When the two gay friends understood that the club would be moved for no less than their complete expulsion, they both laughed outright, and seemingly a goodly and sufficient muster of backers were ready to laugh with them. But a great battle upon a great principle was being prepared for, and as preparation went on the laugh on the one side was proving to be much more loud than general. Alarm therefore set in upon that camp, and apologies and testimonials were raked up, especially for the gay Lothario himself, who was expected to be chiefly, if not solely attacked. The social laxities in question, it was admitted, were sadly much too common; but their friend was, after all, no worse than many other people, who are yet deemed perfectly respectable; and besides, from his having been in the army, some excusing allowance was always of course due to the too ample leisure of the soldier. Then a rector or two, and a still larger number of curates, further testified to all reasonably decorous externals. It was also in evidence that the gallant officer had not hesitated to exchange regiments in order to avoid India, whose climate did not suit his constitution, it being ever a soldier's first duty to maintain his health at its best for the service of his country.
But all was of no avail, and Lothario was cast out. His jocular friend, too, was sent after him; for it was held that to speak so lightly of such grave social delinquencies was even a grosser outrage upon good manners than the commission of the offence. Such loose speech was especially injurious to the young; and it is chiefly as to them that even mere external proprieties have inestimable value. The remarkable movement, thus begun, extended generally through the clubs; and such of them as lacked the moral fibre for the proper scavengering of the house were relegated to a second rank, to become a sort of demi-monde of club life.
But the new views were not without their difficulties of practical application. Here, for instance, is some well-known old sinner, but now quite venerable from age, its infirmities, and its proprieties. There can be no possible doubt about his past life, for he was wont openly to boast of his successful libertinism, and he showed at the time the lightest of hearts over the track of human misery he might be leaving behind him. But when age, or early excess, or both together, had deprived him alike of power and enjoyment in the old way, he became a changed, nay, even a religious man—became, in fact, "rather more respectable than other people." What, then, was to be done with this perplexing specimen? When his parson might be assuring him that he was safely qualifying for heaven, was he to be deemed unsuitable company for a mere earthly club? But by this time, alas for, at least, his earthly prospects, a spirit of true equity had set in as regarded the treatment of the two sexes in such questions. When this justly deahng knife was now apphed to the cord, the cord snapped, and the offender was dropped out, all his later respectabilities and religious tendencies and his conditional penitence notwithstanding. There were not wanting those who at the time thought all this to be hard measure. It was so indeed; for the parties in question were, in fact and of purpose, dealt with as hardly, well-nigh, as had previously been their victims of the other sex.
A characteristic incident occurred in the course of this great social resanitation of the clubs. This was no less than a most cordial acknowledgment from the President of the United National Trades Unions of that time, on behalf of countless parents and families, directly interested for sisters' and daughters' well-being. The president, at the same time, took the opportunity of remarking, that certain previous exhortations to temperance amongst the working classes, made in admittedly good and friendly spirit by the clubs to the unions, and not altogether disregarded by the latter at the time, would have been very much more weighty and appreciative had they come after, instead of before, the exemplary procedure in which the clubs were then engaged.
Woman's equal right to all she finds to suit her.—Author, chap. i.
Trade unions for the working-woman was already a feature of the nineteenth century, as were also servants' institutions, homes, and such-like, promoted from outside their own ranks. But the woman's club, so far as it was the full counterpart to that of the other sex, belongs properly to the twentieth century, in which, indeed, it took a prominent and widely useful part. There was this difference, however, in the two cases, that whereas club life, with the stronger sex, began as an upper-class feature, with the other sex it began in quite the opposite direction. The first attempt at what was properly the woman's club was on behalf of the great class of domestic servants, and had chiefly in view at first the sure provision of an independent and comfortable home for the later life of its members. But the club was also largely available for Sundays or holidays, and for intervals between engagements; and it was ever, with its protecting respectabilities, a resource and shelter, more especially to the young and the stranger who were first entering life in the large towns. At first only the simpler arrangements were attempted, by which, in exchange for small but regular contributions spread over the earlier years, an independent home was secured towards the end of life. But in after years, when women's club institutions, made applicable to female vocations in general, became universal, and upon a scale previously quite undreamt of, they were enabled, by a kind of affiliation to one or other of the great general insurance companies of those times, or to some section of the Government insurance system, to secure any special arrangement that more exactly suited the endless variety in the wants of a well-nigh countless membership.
This commencement of the great future institution of woman's club life was made just prior to the close of the nineteenth century, and arose in London out of a great public meeting at the Mansion House, convened by the then philanthropic Lord Mayor. His lordship had remarked that, although overwhelmed with other work, he must find a spare hour for so excellent an object, even at the cost of making twenty-five hours to the day. The intention was that the domestic servants themselves should be summoned, to take up and carry out independently their own cause. More than a thousand attended, and the result was a complete success. Ere the sun of the twentieth century broke over us, this section of club life was already a distinctive and beneficial feature of the social life of the time.
Other classes and vocations of the sex afterwards fully established their respective clubs. There were, for example, dramatic clubs, in which the amateur and the professional freely mingled, and which not only met the convenience, but powerfully helped to guard and maintain the respectability of the dramatic corps. The legion of postal telegraph and telephone employées had also their clubs. Further, there were clubs in connection with female medical practice—a sphere of woman's work which the twentieth century saw fully taken up, and which was generally acknowledged to be as entirely becoming, as it was entirely indispensable, to sexual delicacy and proprieties. Lastly, were the political clubs; for in this twentieth century the franchise had passed to both sexes alike; and not without a distinct political advantage, as the tendency of the female vote had been rather towards general good qualities, as distinguished from the male-vote tendency towards mere party qualities, in candidature. The collective female vote acted as a kind of Upper House of the franchise, whose calmer consideration ever tempered the storms of the Lower Chamber, the male vote.
Yellowly, ardent unionist as he was, was not blind to union defects.—Author, chap. i.
Speaking colonially, we of the mother country were wont to complain or regret that what is called, or miscalled, "Protection" had re-arisen in some of the colonies, after argument and experience had finally disposed of it at home. And so might it have been said of the particular kind of trade-union crisis I am now to allude to; for the kind of event in question could still arise upon colonial soil, at a time of the twentieth century when it was deemed an impossibility upon the more advanced home ground. The scene in this colonial case was Australia, and the occasion of it was one of those great commercial reactions, which had not ceased to be a feature out there, in company with all the general forward advance, there as well as elsewhere, of the century. When employment fell off just at this time, and wages seriously dropped, the colonial unions most directly affected took up the cause of labour, and maintained that the Government should intervene, and, by means of public works or otherwise, continue the full employment and fair wages of the past. What was the use of a Government, they said, if not to help in a time of need the most important sections of society under its care? There were still means in hand to do this, and when these ran out, more could be levied from the ample resources of the whole society. The government of the place and the day were in dire perplexity; for while they felt that such a directly class demand must be resisted, the unions in question, with their great numerical power in the franchise, threatened a successful political opposition if their demands were not satisfied.
At this time our illustrious Yellowly, the great trade union reconstructor, was still alive, and, notwithstanding advanced years, still busy in completing his reformatory work. He still was, as he had long previously been, the honoured president of that great representative body, the United National Trades Union, which he himself had instituted as the kind of Upper House, or High Court of Appeal, of union life. Yellowly, as head of the home unions, on this serious and compromising occasion, had at once telegraphed to those at the antipodes, in entire disapproval of this demand. While exhorting the colonial Government to make no surrender whatever, he promised a prompt support from the great body of which he was head, and of whose decided mind on the subject he entertained not a doubt. Such crises, he said, were the liability indiscriminately of all classes, and the Government could not help any one in particular except at the cost of the others. Hosts of clerks and other employees were ever being thrown out by such crises, and legions of sewing-women were in crises more or less every day of the year, and yet never dreamt of appeal to Government. And were our hardy working-men to be the only class unable or unwilling to face the contingencies of their life and lot?
The great home union was at once summoned to discuss and pronounce upon the question. The telegraphs and telephones of the day could accomplish that business with equal ease and promptitude. It was not necessary that all members should attend personally, for even at Land's End or John o' Groats they were enabled, by telephonic connection, either to speak or to listen to central London, much as though personally present within the hall of meeting itself.
Nor was opposition unexpected; for the views in question were the still lingering remnants of tenaciously held unionist ideas of the nineteenth century.
The great assembly duly met, and the discussion, waxing warm at times, was protracted almost beyond precedent. Yellowly, in his presidential chair, strengthened by the excitement as well as the importance of the occasion, sat erect to the very end. When discussion was exhausted he rose to put the question, and by a large majority carried the case against the Australian co-unionists. The chairman congratulated his class-fellows upon the proper victory of equitable and reasonable views.
That famous discussion marked a trade union era for the entire empire. The opposing unions at the other side, as the Government there most cordially apprised Yellowly, had loyally accepted defeat, and at once abandoned all their claims and designs. But the victory was dearly bought. The venerable president, who had greatly overtaxed the strength which ninety years of busy life had left him, broke down after concluding the labours of that protracted sitting, and was taken direct to his bed, from which he never again rose alive. But his memory remained behind, and we shall come upon his work again ere long in the course of our retrospect.
We needed quite a new departure in mendicancy and crime.—Author, chap. i.
No feature of the life of the twentieth century was more striking than that of the resolute struggle into which we were then plunged, for a thorough social and moral resanitation. The resanitation of the other or material kind, already alluded to, which had partly preceded and prepared the way for, and partly accompanied this present movement, and the success of which, in the case of London, had promptly spread its benefits to other of our chief cities and towns, had powerfully helped to turn public attention in this new direction. The end in view was no less than the complete extirpation, on the one hand, of all the hereditary professional criminal element, and on the other of all the diversified heritage of professional mendicancy; that is to say, of every form of begging, mendicant tramping, gipsying, and general vagabondage throughout the country.
It was no small help towards these great national purposes that the age teemed with stimulation and suggestion. Necessity had laid its hand upon society; for besides the fact of the increasing density of the population, which was thus with each passing year more and more unsuitable for every form of unsettled life, there was already beginning to be felt the direct effect of the sanitary reconstructions going on, not only in London itself, the prime mover in that way, but also at the other chief urban centres, in turning all the criminal class out of the long-accustomed dark dens and recesses of old town life, which had previously sheltered from common view the hosts of those owls of the night. Nor must we forget the stimulus imparted by a universally educated people, who could thus more clearly apprehend existing social defects, and understand how best to grapple with them.
There was in particular one conspicuous feature of the new movement. Listening at last to the repeated admonitions of science, we had now turned our attention to repressing, by all reasonably practical means, the progenital continuation of the bad or worthless existing elements with which we were thus so vigorously waging war. "Like parent, like child." We might securely dispose of the hardened parents, so that they should no longer harm the rest of society; but it they freely left their brood to take their place, all of society's work had simply to be done over again, and even upon an ever-increasing scale. Already we restrained lunatics from leaving behind them a like lunatic offspring. Thenceforward, in that way, our restraining efforts were extended to the criminal, and to the useless and worthless in general. Our new policy, in short, in this particular department of it, was substantially to this effect—that every child of the society, even of the most questionable origin, which did get into the world, should be properly cared for, so as to give it all the best chances; but that all the care possible to the somewhat delicate case should be taken, that as few more of such children as might be should follow them.
All of this new project, bearing upon the criminal and mendicant elements of society, involved an apparatus of vast preliminary effort and expense. The State must have reckoned upon having, at the outset, to prrovide for, as well as control, a huge mass of criminal, worthless, and helpless beings. But if the State could clear all these demoralizing elements out of sight upon society's highway, and, by having them generally in secure permanent disciplinary charge, prevent, in great measure, inter-marriage and the legacy of a like succession, the State and society would be eventually great gainers. The present cost would form a capital account, large indeed, but well laid out; as the succeeding generation would emerge upon an altogether higher social platform. Let us glance for a moment at both sections of this subject, the criminal and the mendicant.
The hardened and hopeless criminal, who would be released only to reattack society, should not be reallowed the opportunity.—Author, chap. i.
All over the country, and more especially in the great metropolis, there existed a multitudinous class of professional criminals. These were mostly themselves the descendants of criminals before them, and they were mostly rearing descendants of their own who were to succeed them. These persons were everywhere, and in almost every individual case, perfectly well known to the respective local police, which police, ever watching these wary and adroit subjects, would make occasional arrests of the more maladroit, who, after, in most cases, some brief interval of seclusion, would be freely restored to prey, as before, upon society.
Now the new idea as to all this professional and hopeless criminal element, was that on every reasonably possible occasion it should, even for its own good, as well as for that of society at large, be placed permanently under lock and key. If, for instance, there was solid ground for believing that any criminal, if set at large, would only forthwith resume his criminality, why do him the injustice to set him at large? No doubt criminals had their rights; but it now began to be seriously thought that the rights of the non-criminal part of society ought to have an equal consideration.
This new and extirpatory method with crime took its initiatory movement as far back as the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the casual or non-professional lawbreaker, and especially the juvenile first offender, began to be strictly distinguished, and kept carefully separate from the hardened and hopeless professional. The new policy aimed to deal tenderly with all the former, as persons who might yet be even good citizens; but to permanently lock up the latter, as persons of whom there could be reasonably no such hope. From this correct beginning we graduated onwards, giving, as required, exceptional powers to our courts, to meet all exceptional cases. There had been, too often in the past, a senselessly absurd miscarriage of justice, where the judge or magistrate had to confess that the atrocity of the case before him could not be adequately, or even perhaps at all, reached by the existing law. Henceforth he himself was therefore constituted the exceptional law for such exceptional cases; and as all courts in such cases were open, and all sentences revisable, the discretion thus confided, while much more effectually protecting or avenging the innocent, was in no great danger of abuse towards the guilty.
We may turn, by way of illustration, to one glaring social wrong, which, in particular, pressed upon society at this time for such exceptional remedies. This was the terribly prevalent, and hitherto far too safely pursued system of deceiving, seducing, or kidnapping young women for immoral purposes—a wrong truly more awful to its victims than the foulest murder, but as to which, in its various ways of devilish ingenuity, our courts had too often to confess that they stood powerless in trying to apply the actual law. One chief aim also was "to protect young girls from artifices to induce them to lead a corrupt life." This whole question, in fact, was in the condition of a continual outrage upon society's sense of justice and humanity. When in addition to stricter legal enactment, discretionary power was given to the courts, in all cases of this kind, to estimate actual offence and wrong-doing, and to award accordingly, the evil was at once seized by the throat and virtually put an end to.
A great wrong to the poorer classes in the facility to lapse into idle, useless, and mendicant life.—Author, chap. i.
Towards the close of the nineteenth century, this particular form of the evils of society had at last culminated into the intolerable. The different authorities concerned, or which ought to have been concerned, seemed to have been scared by the irrepressible magnitude, the infectious increase, and all the ingenious devices of the ubiquitous begging element. In and about London, for instance, the streets and suburban roads were thronged with beggars, vigorously plying their one common vocation under all varieties of pretence. One vast section of this begging element formed, at every few steps, a pervading public nuisance—somewhat special to the metropolis—by its importunate solicitation under pretence of crossing-sweeping. And yet, the object being simply begging, the streets still remained unswept in presence of this countless legion, and had to be attended to in this way when required, just as though the said legion had no existence. The whole country teemed with idle and begging and thieving tramps, who were too often able-bodied persons, refusing work, and ready for outrage, if needful, to back their demands. There was, besides, a wretched gipsying life, which demoralized and discomforted every locality it successively visited. The professional begging-letter impostor, and sundry other forms of begging imposition, filled up the unsavoury and unwholesome picture.
The state was at length aroused to take in hand this entire mendicancy case, in common with that of crime. The two cases had a strong point of contact, and the management of the one merged substantially into that of the other. The great object of the Government, in facing the difficulties of this question was, on the one hand, the adequate and discriminative care for all real poverty or destitution; and, on the other, the entire abolition of indiscriminate, irregular, unsystematic charity. But it was not proposed, on the Government's part, to intervene as to either supplying the necessary funds, or assuming the management. On the contrary, no small hope of the new system was that it would eventually dispense entirely with the degrading and demoralizing public Poor Law, a hope which was, indeed, eventually realized.
The proposed new system consisted, substantially, of an adequate extension of the then best subsisting forms of "Charity Organization." The State inaugurated a Ministry of Charity, which included, for the time, the old Poor Law administration; and it thereupon summoned to its help both the philanthropic sentiment and the united systematic effort of the whole country. The great appeal was not made in vain. When adequate preparation had thus been effected, the Government issued their earnest exhortation, amounting, indeed, to parental command, that thenceforward all indiscriminate, all unsystematic charity should come to an end.
The State was in no way disposed to conceal what it was about; so that there was ample warning to the entire begging fraternity, of the revolution that was about to fall upon them. Nor was the warning without excellent effect, as the visible commotion in the begging ranks showed, towards the approach of the appointed time. A huge section of those ranks, which abhorred regulated charity almost as much as regular work, had entirely disappeared. But although enough yet remained for a great and difficult task, yet the work was manfully encountered, and successfully dealt with. Distress and destitution were not only everywhere systematically relieved, but everywhere even systematically and successfully sought out. A very chief object of the new system was the care of all the more destitute of the young. The State, as the common parent, and with reference to the maturer life ahead, and the succession which it would certainly leave behind, was wisely concerned for this exposed section of its great family.
The stream of national voluntary charity, thus systematically directed, proved, in the event, always ample for its work; nor were ministering heads and hands ever in any short supply. In this new and discriminative field of charity, all those who, by age or infirmity, were past work were duly cared for; the able and willing were helped into work; the able but unwilling were coercively and reformatively dealt with. If the scene had opened with a crowd of helplessness that might well have overwhelmed the liveliest charity, yet, with each successive year's experience and amelioration, the case became more and more manageable, until, at least, in the succeeding generation, every serious difficulty, in the great original problem, had entirely disappeared.
The old phrase that "John Bull could do nothing without a dinner," represented a national weakness of our public life, which was happily to come to an end with the busier and better life he entered upon in the twentieth century. Our gross and costly, time-wasting, and health-injuring habit of incessant and universal public dinner-stuffing was no longer either consistent or possible after the nineteenth century. We had then too many other and higher objects in hand. Accordingly, this habit expired in favour of one much less costly and more edifying, that, namely, of social and intellectual evening gatherings, where the "refreshments" were of the simplest, and in no way or degree of obstructive effect as regarded the other and chief objects of the assemblage.
This change of the taste and fashion of the time was remarkable chiefly for introducing a practically open door system of evening receptions, on the part of the leading persons, official, scientific, or others of the day; a system which developed into a great national institution and political and social resource of the twentieth and succeeding centuries. In explanation further of this decided change in our old social and somewhat exclusive ways, we must bear in mind that society had become, by this time, much broader and more inclusive, by the universal diffusion of education, as well as of a fairly well-off condition, and of those good manners and that sense of proprieties, which made such open sociability enjoyable, and indeed possible. We had also the benefit of a much freer and more frequent intermixture with foreign society outside of us; for, with all the improved locomotion of the age, travelling was our universal resort for all classes and all circumstances. And, again, the visits which we thus increasingly paid to our neighbours far and near, began also to be as cordially and fully reciprocated by them.
Ministerial receptions of this comprehensive kind became, in particular, the feature of the time; and when the palatial accommodations, furnished by our centralized public office system, became available, these great assemblages at once assumed the character of a grand national institution. The science, the progress, the general intelligence of the time were ever there freshly represented. The effectual shortening of parliamentary sittings by the "Special Hansard" method, already alluded to, was eminently favourable to this new politico-social departure. The wearied minister in "The House" could be promptly refreshed by a short walk through the great corridors of the national edifice, transferring him, mind and body, from the graver to the lighter sphere, within still timely evening hours, and all underneath one and the same roof. These official interminglings and receptions became at last the business and social resource of every evening all the year round, and the pleasant scene where the highest and the humblest of society met together for mutual acquaintance, edification, and good-will.
All along our coasts, such as these coasts still were, at this stage of my retrospect, and more especially the southern and south-eastern, were the evidences that the sea, in past times, had been unremittingly busy, and almost without let or hindrance, in swallowing up the land. Even up to, and during, the nineteenth century, we took these repeated losses of national territory with remarkable composure. A very different spirit had come over us in the twentieth century; that spirit, namely, which sent us reclaiming and embanking, in order to get back all that we could of those terrible ocean robberies of the past. Precautions were everywhere prescribed by authority, so that no such national calamity and national scandal as a landslip into the sea should now, by any possibility, occur.
Nevertheless, the atrocious incident in question did once more happen, and at a time also that was even far into the twentieth century. When the people awoke one morning to learn that, during the night, a score of acres of our southern coast had suddenly subsided and slipped into the Channel waves, grief and regret first, and then high indignation, filled every mind. The Government of the day felt as much concerned as though a great political crisis had come upon them, a crisis which might possibly end in turning them out of office. All the proprietors of the coast had long ago been bound, under heavy penalties, to report at once upon the slightest symptoms of landslipping, and such an event had thus become as rare as it was unwelcome. Happily, on this occasion, for all the reputations that were in jeopardy, some hidden natural causes were proved to have been at their undermining work, and thus proprietor and Government were alike delivered from some serious consequences.
Some prophets would have confidently gone for an entire cessation of strikes, under the anticipated advanced features of the twentieth century. The working classes, they might have thought, would, by that time, by help of sound economic progress, have managed to arrange their differences in some other way. Nevertheless, a notable strike did occur at the advanced time I have indicated; and its particulars, which I am about to give, are somewhat special and curious, as well as illustrative of that particular time. The illustrious Yellowly had not overlooked strikes in his reforming efforts. He, in fact, entirely approved the principle of strikes, as a last resort. He only disapproved of that lax or hasty procedure which resulted in his class being the losing party, and thus proving that there ought not to have been, for such occasions, the national as well as special loss of a strike. The notable strike, which I am now to record, ended, in Yellowly's justifying way, by the success of the strikers. And yet it had no unpleasant features for either side, and was otherwise quite characteristic of the advanced methods, as well as the larger scale of the business works of those times, as compared with the times preceding them. The thing happened in this way.
The great special trust, which had been created for the embankment and reclamation of the Thames' mouth, was, by this time at full work; and one of its contracts—engaging for a thousand million gross of the extra-sized, everlasting, sea-resisting composite brick—had been taken, under competitive public tender, by several conjoined co-operative partnerships of working brickmakers. The quick turn-over, by means of universally applied machinery, made possible the working of great contracts of such a kind upon comparatively small capital, and thus gave, in one direction at least, a decided advantage to these co-partners, whose individual members were themselves the direct labour element in the business. By this time, also, brickmaking had entirely emerged from its old toil and drudgery; while, by aid of ever improving machinery, the output had become so enormously increased, expedited, and cheapened, that bricks of all sorts and sizes were being used well-nigh everywhere and for everything; so that this trade, in particular, had thus advanced to altogether unprecedented proportions, importance, and prosperity.
In the present case, the successful tenderers had based their close calculations mainly upon the help of certain recently improved portions of brickmaking machinery, which were only to be had of the very best quality across the Atlantic, and from whence, of course, they had been duly ordered. But although, at that time, our shipping was alike powerful, commodious and safe, to an unprecedented degree, the storms, as well as other meteorologic extremes of the old times, had not yet been tamed down, as at present, by our great sea-reclaiming processes, which have so contracted the evaporable surface, and diminished that cloud and vapour of our atmosphere, which was wont to be concerned in such pranks with our weather. On this particular occasion, so terrible a storm arose, that all the finer brickmaking machinery in question, handy as it lay upon the deck for prompt discharge, and immediate application to use, was either knocked to pieces or washed overboard.
Well, the strike was directed against the application of strict contract time, under these unavoidable circumstances, and against the heavier work to which human backs must be subjected, if the contract supply must go on, without awaiting the effective aid of the special machinery in question, which machinery had, of course, been at once reordered from Massachusetts, on the occasion of the loss above mentioned. The trust was to suffer damage, because, in default of the large brick supply, just at the exact stipulated time, much other engaged work was kept waiting. But the great Brickmakers' Union stood firm to principle, and was duly justified in its course by the arbitration which followed. The backbone of iron and steel, at once cheap and enduring, uncomplaining and unsuffering, had now been definitively substituted for that of our more sensitive humanity, in all the rougher sections of the work of progress; and to descend from this needful and appropriate elevation and protection was alike injurious to, and unworthy of, our high civilization.