A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and EssaysBradlaugh, Charles
Religion
A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays
Bradlaugh, Charles
Free thought
The occupation may be objected to as unhealthy; but the need for food is
great, and the woman's or child's wages, wretchedly little though they
are, yet help to fill the mouths at home: so the wage is taken till the
worker dies. Here, again, the checks to an increase of population all
stop short of starvation--the victims are poisoned instead of starved.
So where some forty or fifty young girls are crowded into a badly
ventilated work-room, not large enough for half the number, from early
in the morning till even near midnight, when orders press; or in some
work-room where slop clothes are made, and twenty-five tailors are
huddled together in a little parlor scarce wide enough for three--they
work to live, and die slowly while they work. They are not starved, but
is this sort of asphyxiation much better? The poor, are not only driven
to unhealthy, but also to noisome, dwellings. There are in London,
Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, and other large cities,
fearful alleys, with wretched houses, and small ill-ventilated rooms,
each room containing a family, the individuals of which are crowded
together under conditions so wretched that disease, and often speedy
death, is the only possible result. In the East of London, ten, eleven,
and, in some cases, fourteen persons have been found sleeping in one
wretched little room. Is it wonderful that some of these misery-stricken
ones die before they have time to starve? From poverty the mother,
obliged to constantly work that the miserable pittance she gets may
yield enough to sustain bare life, is unable properly to nurse and care
for baby-child, and often quick death, or slow but certain disease,
ending ultimately in the grave, is the result.
The poor live by wages. Wages popularly signify the amount of money
earned by the laborer in a given time; but the real value of the
money-wages is the amount in quantity and quality of the means of
subsistence which the laborer can purchase with that money. Wages may
be nominally high, but really low, if the food and commodities to be
purchased are, at the same time, dear in price. An undue increase
of population reduces wages in more than one way; it reduces them in
effect, if not in nominal amount, by increasing the price of the food
to be purchased; and it also reduces the nominal amount, because the
nominal amount depends on the amount of capital at disposal for employ,
and the number of laborers seeking employment. No remedies for low
wages, no scheme for the prevention and removal of poverty, can ever be
efficacious until they operate on and through the minds and habits of
the masses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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