The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: with a Preface written in 1892Engels, Friedrich
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The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: with a Preface written in 1892
Engels, Friedrich
Great Britain -- Economic conditions; Working class -- Great Britain
"They usually begin their work with the fourteenth year, and, if they
have good constitutions, rarely notice any symptoms before the
twentieth year. Then the symptoms of their peculiar disease appear.
They suffer from shortness of breath at the slightest effort in going
up hill or up stairs, they habitually raise the shoulders to relieve
the permanent and increasing want of breath; they bend forward, and
seem, in general, to feel most comfortable in the crouching position
in which they work. Their complexion becomes dirty yellow, their
features express anxiety, they complain of pressure upon the chest.
Their voices become rough and hoarse, they cough loudly, and the sound
is as if air were driven through a wooden tube. From time to time
they expectorate considerable quantities of dust, either mixed with
phlegm or in balls or cylindrical masses, with a thin coating of
mucus. Spitting blood, inability to lie down, night sweat,
colliquative diarrhoea, unusual loss of flesh, and all the usual
symptoms of consumption of the lungs finally carry them off, after
they have lingered months, or even years, unfit to support themselves
or those dependent upon them. I must add that all attempts which have
hitherto been made to prevent grinders' asthma, or to cure it, have
wholly failed."
All this Knight wrote ten years ago; since then the number of grinders
and the violence of the disease have increased, though attempts have been
made to prevent it by covered grindstones and carrying off the dust by
artificial draught. These methods have been at least partially
successful, but the grinders do not desire their adoption, and have even
destroyed the contrivance here and there, in the belief that more workers
may be attracted to the business and wages thus reduced; they are for a
short life and a merry one. Dr. Knight has often told grinders who came
to him with the first symptoms of asthma that a return to grinding means
certain death, but with no avail. He who is once a grinder falls into
despair, as though he had sold himself to the devil. Education in
Sheffield is upon a very low plane; a clergyman, who had occupied himself
largely with the statistics of education, was of the opinion that of
16,500 children of the working-class who are in a position to attend
school, scarcely 6,500 can read. This comes of the fact that the
children are taken from school in the seventh, and, at the very latest,
in the twelfth year, and that the teachers are good for nothing; one was
a convicted thief who found no other way of supporting himself after
being released from jail than teaching school! Immorality among young
people seems to be more prevalent in Sheffield than anywhere else. It is
hard to tell which town ought to have the prize, and in reading the
report one believes of each one that this certainly deserves it! The
younger generation spend the whole of Sunday lying in the street tossing
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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