RURAL INNOCENCE.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 42, 14 October 1867, Page 256

RURAL INNOCENCE.

’“,7-.;(l'romtheSpjootator.)-About 1 fifty ydars agoj-prices-for corn being very Lighj the landowners of’the districts of Lincolnshire near Louth began enclosing. the Yen, on a great .scale./ Cottages not paying* they did not .build, many, and the ( farmers gradually collected bands. of children. of both sexes,-oand ; set them; to work'under, an overseer. .The system yeas found profitable, particularly to owners of close.parishes, who were thua enabled to pull down cottages, .and; so completely abolish poor-rates and it gradually spread over other parts of the . county, and : then into parts pf Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottingham-, shire, till it became a regular trade. Men out of work or without characters, or nomad by instinct, went about flom village to village, hiring children at so much a week, arid then re-letting them out. to farmers .at an advanced but stil moderate rate, till, at the present-time, it is believed that upwards of three, liuudred of these “ public gangs” are, in existence,. each with its gang-master and about twenty children of both sexes. The farmers, moreover j finding the. supply of cheap and organised labor convenient, adopted the system;for themselves, and organised private. gangß among their own cottagers, till the , total number of children, thus employed amounted to many thousands more. Certain evils connected- with the practice i seem at last to have struck the local clergy, Parliament was induced to stir, and the Home Office 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 girls who are. in the gangs, and decent,laborers’ wives—to be fatal alike to health, to civilization, and to morality. Children of both sexes and of all ages, from five 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, takeß 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 a 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 hours at a time, aud some of the most efficient gang-masters choose out the strongest of the children, and calling him by the significant name of “ back-breaker,” make the 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 the children are disorderly and disinclined to 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 inthe open air and amid the incessant strain of their muscles into tall, athletic men, the districts described sending an unusual number of recruits to the wandering bands of .navvies, notoriously the best laborers in the world. It is on the girls that the cruelty falls. They caunot 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 dress 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 lining races, they stick to the petticoat, which, amidst wet standing corn, as scores of witnesses complain, gets wet, and clinging round them through a day of stooping, gives them an acute form of rheumatism, “ aches,” and disease.

The moral effect of this incessant toil among children, half grown girls and boys herded together, weary and monotonous labor, aud controlled only by the. worse kind of agricultural laborers, men little better than the tramps, may be readily imagined. The laborers in many English parishes are coarse -enough, but among these poor wretches civilisation disappears. .Upon this point there is an overwhelming consensus pf evidence, even flom the few 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 revolted, and - declare they would sooner turn out of the road 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 ngeß bathe together, stark,naked, and .the most infamous actions are , boasted of with a: shamelessness rarely seep .among savages. The.gangs are the. special resort of all girls who have lost their -characters, and the gangrinoafers. often set .themselves to deliberate corruption. *Oue- y?it-qesß, a bookseller, who had .belonged, to-one/of these gangs, informed: the ; Commissioner distinctly that, the gangers set, the phifdren to ,sipg obscene Aonga to enliven the long road home,.-and-it is; clear flom all mspner offinpidental testimony," that the Aiunerhour is often the sign .for horseplay,; which degenerate# iafp dcUbcrate.pbswipity; Jfa>

doubt muph of all this is. due tp an exces-. sive; coarseness of manners still uneradieated in many parts of the country, and, indeed, ineradicable until the English! peasant has been re-housed $ and it as’ quite possible t 6 confuse a low civilization with* a degenerated morality. But the universal testimdny of the local witnesses, is, 7 that the l girls and boys; employed:-in these, 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 Gleaners going out, are decent; but listen to them coming home. Women employed in the fields are everywhere the worst, on the country side ; and if the labor involves wandering, or night-work,, as in the case of hop-pickers, • civilization disappears, and whole farms 1 become temporary brothels. But.among these gangs the evil strikes society at ,the root. These gang-laborers are children, forced to labor by ■ their parents, deprived of the possibility of education, made lustful by forced companionship, brutal by compulsory . association with brutes. Mothers, themselvos bred among associations which at least kill squeamishness, repeat to the Commissioners one unvarying song, W I would rather hunger their strongest asseveration—“ than let my girls go to the field.” For, be it remembered, the evil does not pass with childhood. The gipsy taste i 6 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 to the the.fresh rough “ larky ” labor of the fields, where there is “ company,” and beer, and paramours at discretion. If this account is considered too strong, all we 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 —alh female delicacy of character is utterly gone” or, like the Rector of Bramhall, who as a magistrate testifies 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 gang labor to be absolutely indispensible, but is so 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 the factory, they have no interest in protecting barbarism, and will, we doubt, accept any sufficient scheme for its amelioration. We trust, therefore, that Lord Shaftesbury, wrio 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 Bhould 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 report 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 evidonoe 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 hoys. 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 we can, and must, prevent children from being compelled to to immorality, and the only 1 plan which will, we are convinced, be found sufficient is to prohibit female l ibor in the gangs altogether up to the age of seventeen. They will not embrace it. then, as they will not haye the physical- strength, and the evil will be cured at a blow without serious inconvenience either to the farmers, who out of these counties never employ gang labor, or to the who'all, testify that they hate the system, arid believe that, what with the waste of shoe-leather and clothing, and rooted .djslike which' tbeir girls acquire for service; ganging does not pay them. We wish, with tliej Comnais* sioners, that it were possible to, go a step further, and prohibit field-labor to .women altogether, -but by the tinie the country is civilised enough to bear 6uch a- restriction opinion will Jhave. ariticipated legislST tire action; and field labor will be as impossible to a cottager’s wife as to . a duchess.. ,If, in addition to this, w.© prohibit.the employment, of-any boy under 12, unless he can read and write, we‘ shall have done as as the preserit state of, ourVCcivilisatiori! will admit, and shall even then have done lqss than we; have; accomplished for the' factory hands.! They canupt' be em< ployed up fo, flie’. age of f^rteeh/^-an, age which ought almost half their time rs; giynnio education, a law which in the factory; districts.amounte to/the compulsory edupatiQn .of. -the whole population, and ,works so • effectively that in many, parts of'.Yorkshire /the -philcflen uu4 parents „ iq>eak ! ; different

languages, people o ver/ thirty talking" a broad, -racy patois, and 'people under twenty “London English.”], .When that ohaqge, which, is of tittle 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 en the possibility that in about another century or; so England will-be as civilised as Prussia , or Connecticut.