Peter Gaskell was an obscure London surgeon. We do not know what prompted him to undertake his study of the English working class. The lengthy title of his investigation into the impact of industrialization on English workers, however, reveals much about his point of view. In Gaskell’s mind, the moral, social, and physical characteristics of the laboring classes were inextricably connected. Moreover, all were a direct reflection of the patterns and nature of work. In this excerpt, Gaskell sketches the moral, social, and physical conditions of English workers before industrialization took hold, linking these characteristics to preindustrial work conditions. As you read it, ask yourself what assumptions were at the heart of his analysis. What connection did he see between work and morality?

Prior to the year 1760, manufactures were in a great measure confined to the demands of the home market. At this period, and down to 1800 . . . the majority of the artisans engaged in them had laboured in their own houses, and in the bosoms of their families. It may be termed the period of domestic manufacture; and the various mechanical contrivances were expressly framed for this purpose. The distaff, the spinning wheel, producing a single thread, and, subsequently the mule and jenny, were to be found forming part of the complement of household furniture, in almost every house of the districts in which they were carried on, whilst the cottage everywhere resounded with the clack of the hand-loom.

These were, undoubtedly, the golden times of manufactures, considered in reference to the character of the labourers. By all the processes being carried on under a man’s own roof, he retained his individual respectability; he was kept apart from associations that might injure his moral worth, whilst he generally earned wages which were sufficient not only to live comfortably upon, but which enabled him to rent a few acres of land; thus joining in his own person two classes, that are now daily becoming more and more distinct. It cannot, indeed, be denied, that his farming was too often slovenly, and was conducted at times but as a subordinate occupation; and that the land yielded but a small proportion of what, under a better system of culture, it was capable of producing. It nevertheless answered an excellent purpose. Its necessary tendence filled up the vacant hours, when he found it unnecessary to apply himself to his loom or spinning machine. It gave him employment of a healthy nature, and raised him a step in the scale of society above the mere labourer. A garden was likewise an invariable adjunct to the cottage of the hand-loom weaver; and in no part of the kingdom were the floral tribes, fruits, and edible roots more zealously or more successfully cultivated.

The domestic manufacturers generally resided in the outskirts of the large towns, or at still more remote distances. Themselves cultivators, and of simple habits and few wants, the uses of tea, coffee, and groceries in general but little known, they rarely left their own homestead. The yarn which they spun, and which was wanted by the weaver, was received or delivered, as the case might be, by agents, who travelled for the wholesale houses; or depots were established in particular neighbourhoods, to which he could apply at weekly periods. Grey-haired men — fathers of large families — have thus lived through a long life, which has been devoted to spinning or weaving, and have never entered the precincts of a town, till driven, of late years, by the depression in their means of support, they have gone there, for the first time, when forced to migrate with their households, in search of occupation at steam-looms.

Thus, removed from many of those causes which universally operate to the deterioration of the moral character of the labouring man, when brought into large towns . . . the small farmer, spinner, or hand-loom weaver, presents as orderly and respectable an appearance as could be wished. It is true that the amount of labour gone through, was but small; that the quantity of cloth or yarn produced was but limited — for he worked by the rule of his strength and convenience. They were, however, sufficient to clothe and feed himself and family decently, and according to their station; to lay by a penny for an evil day, and to enjoy those amusements and bodily recreations then in being. He was a respectable member of society; a good father, a good husband, and a good son.

It is not intended to paint an Arcadia — to state that the domestic manufacturer was free from the vices or failings of other men. By no means; but he had the opportunities brought to him for being comfortable and virtuous — with a physical constitution, uninjured by protracted toil in a heated and impure atmosphere, the fumes of the gin shop, the low debauchery of the beer-house, and the miseries incident to ruined health. On the contrary, he commonly lived to a good round age, worked when necessity demanded, ceased his labour when his wants were supplied, according to his character, and if disposed to spend time or money in drinking, could do so in a house as well conducted and as orderly as his own. . . .

The domestic manufacturer possessed a very limited degree of information; his amusements were exclusively sought in bodily exercise, the dance, quoits, cricket, the chace, the numerous seasonal celebrations, etc.; an utter ignorance of printed books, beyond the thumbed Bible and a few theological tracts; seeking his stimulus in home-brewed ale; having for his support animal food occasionally, but living generally upon farm produce, meal or rye bread, eggs, cheese, milk, butter, etc.; the use of tea quite unknown, or only just beginning to make its appearance; a sluggish mind in an active body; labour carried on under his own roof, or, if exchanged at intervals for farming occupation, this was going on under the eye of, and with the assistance of his family; his children growing up under his immediate inspection and control; no lengthened separation taking place until they married, and became themselves heads of families; engaged in pursuits similar to his own, and in a subordinate capacity; and lastly, the same generation living age after age on the same spot, and under the same thatched roof, which thus became a sort of heirloom, endeared to its occupier by a long series of happy memories and home delights. . . .

The very fact of these small communities (for they were generally found in petty irregular villages, containing from ten to forty cottages), being as it were, one great family, prevented, except in a few extraordinary instances, any systematic course of sinning. This moral check was indeed all-powerful in hindering the commission of crime, aided by a sense of religion very commonly existing amongst them. In one respect this failed, however — and it was in preventing the indulgence of sexual appetite, in a way and at a time which are still blots upon the rural population of many districts. . . . The mischief produced by this means was, however, of small amount. This premature intercourse occurred generally between parties, when a tacit though binding understanding existed. Its promiscuousness seldom went further. So binding was this engagement, that the examples of desertion were exceedingly rare — though marriage was generally deferred till pregnancy fully declared itself.

There can be no question, but the more widely inquiries are extended, the more obvious becomes the fact, that the domestic manufacturer, as a moral and social being, was infinitely superior to the manufacturer of a later date.

Source: Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, by E. Royston Pike, pp. 23–26. Copyright © 1966 Routledge. Published by George Allen & Unwin, 1970. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.

Questions to Consider