RURAL INNOCENCE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XII, Issue 518, 17 October 1867, Page 2

RURAL INNOCENCE.

(From tbe Spectator.) About fifty years ago, prices for corn being very high, the landowners of the districts of Lincolnshire near Louth began enclosing the Fen on a great scale. Cottages not paying, they did not build many, and the farmers gradually collected bands of children of both sexes, and set them to work under an overseer. The system was found profitable, particularly to owners of close parishes, who were thus enabled to pull down cottages, and ' so completely j abolish poor-rates and it gradually spread over other parts of the county, and then into parts of Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, SuH'olk, and Nottinghamshire, till it became a regular trade. Men out of work or without characters, or nomad by instinct, went about from village to village, hiring children at so much a week, and then rc-letting them out to farmers at an advanced but stil moderate rate, till, at the present time, it is believed that upwards of three huudred of these “public gangs” are in existence, each with its gang-master and about twenty children of both sexes. The farmers, moreover, finding the supply of cheap and organised labor convenient, adopted the system for themselves, and organised private gangs among their own cottagers, till the total number of children thus employed amounted to many tiiousands more. Certain eviis connected with the practice seem at last to have struck the local clergy, Parliament was induced to stir, and the Home Oifice ordered an official inquiry into the system. The Report of the Commissioners has been received and printed with the evidence, and the latter confirms the worst stories current. The gang system, as at present carried on in these counties, is declared by witnesses of all kinds and class—clergymen, farmers, laborers, old gang-masters, mothers of eirla

who are in the gangs, and decent laborers’ wires—to bo fatal alike to health, to civilization, and to morality. Children of both sexes and of all ages, from fire to sixteen,

are. in fact, sold by the wretched laborers to the gang-masters at so much per head per week, generally, we are bound to add, out of the direst poverty. The ganger having collected his children, takes them away to his job, forcing them to walk, or, if needful, to carry each other, for distances which often involve of themselves great cruelty. Five miles out and five back is thought nothing of, in addition to almost continuous labor for at least ten hours u day. This labor is generally weeding or picking stones, perhaps the most exhausting kinds of toil a child can be called on to perform. They involve stooping for liou ,- s at a time, and some of the most ellicient gang-masters choose out tha strongest of the children, and calling him by the significant name of “ back-breaker,"’ make tiie remainder keep up with him in the furrow. The gang-masters are not generally cruel—though there are exceptions—as notorious cruelty would diminish their supply of serfs, but (ho children are disorderly and disinclined t o toil—imagine your child of ten stooping ten hours a day at weeding in the open fields in all weathers !—and work is forced on with the strap, administered impartially to boys and girls. These latter “ ought to be strapped,” so the mothers say, and nobody complains. The effect of the labor is not however, the same upon both sexes. There is strong [evidence to prove that, except in occasional [cases, it hardens the boys, who, if they do | not die, grow up in the open air and amid [the incessant strain of their nm-cles into j tall, athletic men, the districts described isending an unusual number of recruits to [the wandering bands of navvies, uoto--1 riously the best laborers in the world. It jis on the girls that the cruelty falls. They I cannot stand the exposure ; their limbs give way under the toil, till one poor woman testified that “ ironing with a hot warming-pan ” alone enabled them to sleep, and even their very dross is against them. Like true .Britons, who, when not civilised, are without exception, or with the exception only of Digger Indians, the most helpless of living races, they stick to the petticoat, which, amidst wet standing corn, us scores of witnesses complain, gets wet, and clinging round them through a day of stooping, gives them an acute form of rheumatism, “ aches,” and pulmonary disease.

The moriil effect of tins incessant toil among chil.lron, half grown girls and boys herded together, weary and monotonous labor, and controlled only by the worse kind of agricultural laborers, men little better than the tramps, may be readily imagined, 'i lie laborers in many English parishes are coarse enough, bt : among these poor wretches civilisation (.1 - ■; Upon this point there is an over consensus of evidence, even fro t in; f, ' farmers who pronounce that the system is indispensible to their tillage. The single amusement is obscene talk, which becomes so shocking that the very laborers are revolt d, and declare they would sooner turn out of the ra id than meet the gangs returning. All the offices of nature, say twenty witnesses, are performed in public by both sexes, without the faintest effort at. concealment. Boys and girls of all ages bathe together stark naked, and the most infamous actions are boasted of ■•villi a shamelessness rarely seen among savages. The gangs are the special resort of all girls who have lost their characters, and the gang-masters often set themselves to deliberate corruption. One witness, a bookseller, who had belonged to one of these gangs, informed the Commissioner distinctly that the gangers set the children to sing obscene songs to enliven the long road home, and it is clear from all manner of incidental testimony, that the dinnerhour is often the sign for horseplay, which degenerates into deliberate obscenity, No doubt much of all this is due to an excessive coarseness of manners still uneradicated in many parts of the country, and, indeed, ineradicable until the English peasant has been re-housed ; and it is quite possible to confuse a low civilization with a degenerated morality. But the universal testimony of the local witnesses is, that the girls and boys employed in ihese gangs are much worse than their own brothers and sisters not so employed, that the evil is deepened by aggregation, and, as we should add, by excessive toil. Cleaners going out, are decent ; but listen to them coming home. Women employed in the fields are everywhere the worst on the country side ; and ii the labor involves wandering, or night-work, as in the case of hop-pickers, civilization disappears, and whole farms become temporary brothels. But among these gangs the evil strikes society at the root. These gang-laborers are cidldren, forced to labor by their parents, deprived of the possibility of education, made lustful by forced companionClip, brutal by compulsory association with brutes. Mothers, themselves bred among associations which at least kill squeamishness, repeat to the Commissioners one unvarying song, “ I would rather hunger ’’—their strongest asseveration—“ than let my girls go to the field.” For, be it remembered, the evil does not ipass with childhood. The gipsy taste ia soon aroused, and becomes one of the strongest of the passions. The girls who (have been in the gangs will rarely take to | other work, never go into service, and ! when married leave their children at home ■drugged with opium to go out again io the the fresh rough “ larky ” labor of the fields, where there is “ company,” and beer, and paramours at d scretion. If this account ia considered too strong, all wa can say is, we have carefully toned it down from reports mainly guaranteed by local

clergymen, who, like the Vicar of Chatteris, doubt whether any chastity is left among villagers where ganging is common; or, like the Rev. M. S. Jackson, assert that “ the young women are utterly shameless —all female delicacy of character is utterly gone ; " ■ or, like the Rector of Brarahali,

who as a magistrate testiiles that cases of indecent assault are infrequent in his district, because “little is thought of such behaviour, and it is passed over unnoticed or like Mr Geo, M, Smith, who holds eaug labor to be absolutely indispensible, but is bo convinced of the immorality of the system that he would prohibit mixed gangs by law.

It is clear this state of things must be cured. Though the country gentlemen may not be so willing to sanction interference with labor in the field as they were to sanction the same measure in thefactory, they have no interest in protecting barbarism, and will, we doubt, accept any sufficient scheme for its amelioration. We trust, therefore, that Lord Shaftesbury who has taken up the question, will ven, ture upon a scheme somewhat bolder than that of the Commissioners. They admit in terms that if gang labor were suppressed altogether the country would be benefited, but content themselves with recommending that gang-masters should be licensed—an utterly useless provision, as neither the children nor the parents will inform ; that mixed gangs should be disallowed unless the gang-master is aided by a gang-mistress —a proposal at which country clergymen will shake their heads for reasons quite apparent in this very repoit —that the hours of labor should be regulated ; and no boys under eight, and no girls under twelve, should be permitted to enter a gang. This rule as regards boys leaves them still no time for school, and as regards girls will be ridiculously inoperative. It is the big girls, not the little ones, who get into mischief. Read the plain spoken, sensible evidence of Mr C. G. Read, surgeon, Stradbroke, who says distinctly that “ the big boys go to the gangs because of the big girls, and the big girls go because of the boys. The freedom of the work is seductive to girls, and seems to fascinate them ” —a remark which half the farmers in the Eastern Counties would endorse. Of course, beyond a certain age no free legislature would attempt to interfere. We cannot keep people moral by Act of Parliament, but wc can, and must, prevent children from being compelled to to immorality, and the only plan which will, we are convinced, be found sufficient is to prohibit female Libor in the gangs altogether up to the age of seventeen. They will not embrace it ihon, as they wi'l not have the physical strength, and the evil will be cured at a blow without serious incony r :e either to the farmers, who our oi ti es',- counties never employ gang Lb)., or 1., (he cottagers, who all testify i.; i j.icy nan) the system, and believe that,

vvii..t wit it .:■) waste of shoe-leather and

tjiothing, and rooted dislike which their -4 £> rl = acquire for service, gauging does not pav them. We wish, with the Comniis* sioners, that it were possible to go a step further, and prohibit field labor to women altogether, but by the time the country is civilised enough to bear such a restriction opinion will have anticipated legislative action, and fi-ld labor will be as impossible to a cottager’s wife as to a duches--. If, in addition to this, we prohibit the employment of any boy under 12, unless he can read and write, we shall have done as as the present state of our civilisation will admit, and shall even then have

done less than we have accomplished for the factory hands. They cannot be employed up to the ago of thirteen—an age which ought now to be extended, unless almost half their time is given to education, a law which in the factory districts amounts to the compulsory education of the whole population, and works so effectively that in many parts of Yorkshire the children and their parents speak two different languages, people over thirty talking a broad, racy patois, and people under twenty “London English.” When that change, which is of little value in itself except as a symptom, Yorkshire being on the whole as fine a language as English, takes place, we may begin to congratulate ourselves on the possibility that in about another centu-y or so England will be as civilised as Prussia or Connecticut.