University of Virginia Library

THE FACTORY CHILD'S MOTHER.

FACTORY CHILD'S MOTHER.
When selfishness ascends, and thirst of fame,
The wish for greatness, fondness for a name
Is plainly seen, then deep, deep is the plan
To gain applause by every pompous man;
Genius, they borrow what belongs to me,
And leave us shiv'ring in cold poverty.

FACTORY CHILD.
O! weep not, mother! we have friends remain,
In time we yet may get our work again;
Then never more 'gainst masters will we write,
For those give bread by day and rest by night;
Whilst they that speak against them never give
Aught but high words—on them we cannot live.
Here we sit cold, with sorrow in our looks,
And forc'd to purchase our own father's books—
Truth o'er high speeches ever must aspire,
While our dear father has poetic fire.

MOTHER.
Had we but had the means our works to puff,
This day, my child, we should have gold enough;
But wealth will rule, be it in wrong or right,
The weak must ever tremble under might:
Hope I have none from yon tall man of pride,
Who ought his head in deepest shades to hide;
The cause of S---r, not the cause of mine,
Makes him in columns of the journals shine.

FATHER.
Where now is Hobhouse with his factory bill—
The boasted friend? Ye may do as you will,
Your cause is left for others to defend,
Just raise them and their sympathies will end;
Send them to London, raise on high your hopes,
Your faith is vain,—as well depend on popes:
Mix'd in one colour, yellow, pink, and blue,
For self is self, and what care these for you?

FATHER.
Thou knowst 'tis said and knowst I deeply drink,—
Without support how can I write or think?
How could I say that this pure mercy's bill
Would ruin thousands, with each little mill
Among the glens, where runs the moorland stream!
We know they are not constant like the steam,
Can the great O---r tell the rills to run?
Can he call down the moon, or stop the sun?
Can he in wisdom drive six hundred wrong?
Or are his noisy arguments so strong
That labour must be rul'd at his command?
As soon let lunatics control the land,
Plead with the Lords in declamation wild,
Then tell how all his brother maniacs smil'd.

FACTORY CHILD.
Tell us how he schemes to write,
Tell us that priests sometimes indite;
But be it spoken to my sorrow,
I once was lent, but never borrow;
Now I see some people's crest
Nodding high above the rest;
Thompson's reason beat them all,
Made even Sadler's saddle fall;
Broke the girths, the crupper broke;
'Gainst deep design the truth he spoke,
Spoke as a man fit to be heard,
And reason smil'd at every word:
If some should Bradford represent,
Whether should O---, or he be sent;
One is the moon that round us runs,
The other light is our own sun's.
What have parsons here to do?
Let them to the factory go,
Work and try, but let alone
The way in which the work is done;
Factory masters help to keep
Those who preach or study deep.
Grateful then are those to trade,
Work while we will if those are paid:
Their children to the mills ne'er sent,
They for their houses pay no rent;
No! they can better livings make,
And few till eight o'clock awake.
Some talk, but yet have hearts like rocks,
Their glory is the Sunday box;
Vain flatt'rers of the rich and great,
While they are paupers on the state.
The great mill-owners wish much good,
Witness such men as Mr. W---d;
With capital he then could spin,
And half a country's trade grasp in,
While little masters might give o'er.
To wander destitute and poor.
Then to such speeches never list,
They spring from some monopolist,
Or from some high-blue Tory sent,
Who would aspire to Parliament.

FACTORY CHILD'S MASTER.
Now, did I ever strike thee with this hand?
Would those have me to let my fact'ry stand?
I heard each speech and what the great ones said,—
Give us cheap corn, and let us have a trade;
Why blind us with a simple factory bill?
We are awake and see the greatest ill—
So blind Bartimeus blindly grop'd his way,
Till He who made us all first used the clay.
Now light is come, and England's parents free
To send their children to the factory;
'Tis poverty that hangs upon us all,
Sinks down our trade, and makes the nation fall.
The children I respect and pity too;
I wish to pay, yes, every debt that's due.
It is not cruelty, as late was said,
That keeps my factory children out of bed;
I have no gains, nor ever use you hard,
And week by week you get your due reward;
Had ye to go to F---y H---ll for your bread,
A few, few weeks perhaps you might be fed,
But you must soon return with falling tears,
But I have paid your wages now for years;
Let Oastler speak, let Hamilton and Wood
Plead for my factory children's health and good;
Let Forster come, and such as love to be
Heard in the crowd, work in the factory;
Let them have goods to make and wool to buy,
Wages to pay, and yet no market nigh;
To see the parents of the factory child
Looking despair, with features pale and wild,
Come for their wages long ere these are earn'd.
These things I know, and oft at these have mourn'd,
Oft have I wished that those who much do say,
Would be so kind as one week's wages pay;
But words are neither silver nor yet gold,
They talk, but to their purses cry ‘hold, hold!’
As soon expect a goat a sheep to turn,
As soon behold the mighty ocean burn,
As soon shall ev'ry church change to a mill,
As Parliament to grant a Ten Hours' Bill.
In every part of Yorkshire I have been,
The child and manufacturers have I seen,
And though the system may be fraught with ill,
The working classes fear a Ten Hours' Bill.
Let great taxation greatly fall, and then
There might be some great hope of working ten.
Reduce your rents, the harass'd tenants cry,
Then Sadler talk of infant slavery.
We all are slaves—yes, some are slaves to pride,
Though humble on a donkey he may ride;
He may aspire to be some day a knight
In Stephen's hall, to show his glorious light:
There, like some Cicero of ancient times,
To charm three hundred with his borrow'd rhymes.

As Justice now I hold the balance fair,
Where money is, that must be kept with care;
And as the balance should be lifted even,
Instead of Ten, blind Justice cries Eleven.
All the worst cases ever can be brought
Throughout the whole of Yorkshire now are sought,
Against us masters in array are set,
While all the labourers who toil and sweat,
Apprentices of towns, are set aside,
These are forgotten while they us deride.
But Mercy ever sees where suff'ring dwells,
In mills, or where the mighty ocean swells;
The farmer's starving child is quite forgot,
The unemploy'd in many a roofless cot,
One universal cry 'gainst mills ascends,
'Tis thought to gain some low but selfish ends;
Deep, deep below, where do the miners go,
A world of death o'er heads and gloom below!
What can the rich, the vain, the childless know,
Theirs is false sympathy, these feel not woe;
These walk not in the dark, dark hours of night,
To bear their children money with delight;
Give these but eight, the family be but ten,
Wrapp'd in the deepest poverty, and then
How they would learn humility with years!
Their speeches then would fetch old Pluto's tears;
Surrounded in an evening with them all,
They ask for bread—and who can hear that call
But honestly must strive that bread to gain,
To keep their tears from falling down like rain?
Are places ready? No! how could they all
Into some other situation fall;
'Tis empty air, just as I said at first,
Or like a bubble—but the bubble's burst.
The boasting words of such the wise don't heed,
'Tis not to words we look, but to the deed.
Blest be the Lords who aim at greater deeds,
And cheaper make the staff which each one needs;
Leaving high places with a patriot's scorn,
Ready to take the enormous tax from corn.
Against their interest they have nobly stood,
To do the great community great good.
Bread must be had, and for the factory child;
Then why let other candidates talk wild?
What is reform? it now may fill the head;
A cottage blessing is a store of bread.
Read life as I have—yes, in every form,
And care not now for parliament's reform;
I see so much of self in human dust,
That Christian as the Jew I now distrust;
Self reigns predominant in every sect,
And those are foolish who themselves neglect.
Ye Bards, who in your verses take delight,
Part not to angels with your copyright,
For fear your children weep, and weep in vain,
Yourself transfix'd in agony and pain.
Adieu! pretenders to the people's good,
Whose eloquence comes flowing like a flood;
Great Sheridans of Yorkshire, talk no more,
The reign of all your glory now is o'er:
Though thousands on your words with rapture hung,
Charm'd with the sophisms of each learned tongue,
Surpris'd, enraptur'd with each spacious mind,
Like a tun'd organ, fill'd with empty wind.
At Huddersfield the rhetoric that flow'd,
The wit, the eloquence that there they show'd,
Ancients and moderns all must quit the field,
These made the glory of all Yorkshire yield;
There knowledge in its great variety
Of all the spindles in the factory,
At Huddersfield, at Bradford, and at Leeds,
Was high display'd to sow dissension's seeds.
The senate's dignity they have display'd,
With pulpit eloquence have talk'd of trade:
In Jewish days no seeming holy seer,
No sage, no statesman, had they harangued there,
Nor Demosthenes could the audience meet,
Like these, with strains they never, never felt.
But now your native bard must humbly speak,
Although his lines be senseless, low, and weak,
You know his merits; all his failings know—
His wants, his follies, all are known to you:
His lines ye feel, from Craven mountains wild,
E'en to the stanzas of the Factory Child;
Was I a spaniel, taken to the moor
Where Aire first rises, and the cataracts roar,
Where Hammerton and I to sport have rang'd,
Unto that dog I ne'er, I ne'er had chang'd;
His faults I would have hid, and him had seen,
Though seas, and time, and oceans roll'd between,
Trod all uncharity beneath my feet,
And met as various oils in cisterns meet;
No malice in my breast I ever bear,
I may have poverty, but truth is there;
From an old friend, no, never, never fly,
Nor change as his five pounds have chang'd lac dye.
While here among my Yorkshire friends I live,
Although my head be empty as a sieve,
Till something lays me peaceful on the shelf,
The next, next verses shall be for myself.
When sorrow wakens, and when grief is near,
When babblers with the trade would interfere;
When friends are slighted who have done us good;
When Tory streams come swelling like a flood;
When all electioneering schemes are tried;
When these explode like shells on every side,
Truth stands predominant, her flag she bears,
Though on her cheeks be hung her frozen tears.
Commerce no cholera, no fever dreads,
Secure she on these dreadful demons treads;
The smiling hearth thou mak'st us once a week,
But had we from philanthropists to seek
The poor, poor pittance that vain word could give,
How could the bard and his large offspring live!
I recollect the time when all could meet,
Then men and masters, in the public street,
Be where they would, there was no cold neglect,
Till Tester came, and where was then respect?
Then in each other confidence was lost,
And Christian feelings to the winds were toss'd:
And must the breach be widen'd every day,
The evil spread till all becomes its prey?
Must disobedience spread her raven wings,
And discontent, which sure destruction brings?
Why sow dissension's seeds among the poor?
Their eyes are open and they want no more;
'Tis folly—of the foolish thus to prate,
Scorn'd by the poor, and laughed at by the great:
Is there not now enough of discontent?
Is not dissension through the kingdom sent?
Then why instil into our infant race
Seeds of rebellion, and not seeds of grace?
By wars, by pestilence surrounded now;
By England's mighty nation fallen low;
By all the shivering forms that round us stand;
By all the judgments o'er a guilty land;
By our taxation, by depressed trade;
By all the struggles wages now are paid—
Sow not dissension in the nation's breast,
But rather strive to make the wretched blest;
Why sink us lower with your schemes so wild,
And pluck your laurels from the factory child?
Oastler, the bard now asks you to his cot,
But you the bard of Airedale have forgot,
Made him your ladder up to great renown;
Your building finished, he is tumbled down,
Useless to lie, and never more to ascend.
Though poor, he may be lifted by a friend.
He is no glutton, though his faults he knows,
In his deep care, amid his gloomy woes,
His glass he takes while he is met with scorn,
And all his faults are to the Greatest borne;
Griev'd to the heart, and press'd into the dust,
A worm would speak, and so your poet must,
When all false statements impiously are made
To taint the masters, and destroy the trade.
'Twas bad enough when all went friendly on,
How will it be when all that friendship's gone,—
When ministers and doctors interfere,—
When stewards harangue, and when priests are there;
Theirs is the pulpit, let them stay at home,
To cheer the sick, fast sinking to the tomb;
The father of the factory child can feel,
Wants not their aid, for few have hearts of steel;
They know their wants, their feelings do not sleep,
They know 'tis labour must their offspring keep.
Will these for schooling pay of every child?
Around their tables have the infants smil'd?
Have these been cloth'd and longer kept in bed?
By landed property have these been fed?
Have these, to cheer the lonely road at night,
Subscribed to give the factory child a light?
What have they done? why, Patty answers ‘naught;’
The bard had once a light, but Oastler put it out.
The poet wept, his children urg'd in vain,
Himself insulted, where did hope remain?
The road was plain, the pointed truth he spoke,
And all the feelings of the father woke.
Friends, I to you appeal, can you forget
Since first as your own bard we friendly met?
Where are the smiles—are all the lines forgot?
No! sympathy and feeling answer, not:
From Luna's streams to where the Humber roars,
From Whitby's cliffs unto the eastern shores,
Your bard is known, and all his feelings too,
You see his lines, but never feel his woe;
Hear not his sighs, nor know his depth of grief,
You tell his faults, but never give relief.
But need he mourn? no, grateful now he writes,
Though sorrow prompts him, and though grief indites.
See trade now struggling with enormous weight,
Like a ship laden with too great a freight;
And shall those empty boats, with pennants gay,
Sail round her and insult her on her way?
Strive to cause mutiny, or spoil her helm,
Her braces slacken, and the whole o'erwhelm?
Leeds, Huddersfield, and Bradford are on board,
Their trade by millions has been long ador'd;
And shall some pirate her true compass take,
The vessel scuttle, and her foremast break?
No! she is mann'd with Wisdom for her mate;
Her captain Truth, the pillar of the state;
The boats may sail, their various squibs may flash,
Their wooden swords against the vessel clash,
Secure she sails, deep, deep within the tide,
Though porpoises spout water at her side;
Though billows of wild scandal dash her prow,
They harmless break beneath the vessel's bow:
Within the ship are Yorkshire's brightest hopes,
Though children are on board to guide the ropes.
Let Forster in his little pinnace rage,
Let Reverends in their schooners fierce engage;
Let buccaneers come down with greatest skill,
The purser of the ship is master still;
But should she sink amid the troubled sea,
Then deep in whirlpools of pale poverty,
The friends, the foes, whatever they may think,
Would with the vessel of our commerce sink.
So whatsoe'er the demagogues can say,
'Tis trade must guide the vessel on her way.
Walk o'er the Craven hills, the children see,
Sit in the cottage of cold poverty,
Then you would hear how joyful they would be
To have their children in the factory.
This district of our trade you call so bad,
Let that remove, would not the land look sad?
One universal cry of anguish wild
Would rise from son, from daughter, wife and child.
Let infidels cry out against the trade;
Let Christians in the meetings be display'd;
Let great M.P.'s have speeches long and loud;
Let O---r harangue all the listening crowd;
Let Bod---n be bold and first appear,
And all that talk be greeted with a cheer—
Trade stands secure, and cares not for all this,
Though stewards harangue, and though serpents hiss?
Where could the first in work, the sorters fly,
Down to the combs?—the generous speakers cry;
And where a thousand combers gain more wool,
If government take notice of S. B---ll?
Where could the weavers get their warp or weft,
If to such governors the trade was left?
Where would the dyers and the pressmen fly?
Few, few the pieces that would want lac dye.
As when some vessel has been run aground
In some strait river, or some shallow sound,
Another, and another bears along,
A wood of masts upon each other throng:
The landsmen come, and at the sailors scoff,
And taunting cry, ‘And can't you get her off?’
While the true sons of Neptune deeply growl,
Rage on each face, and anger in each soul:—
So are the owners of the factories plac'd,
Hooted by ignorance, and by fools disgrac'd;
The vessel of our trade they would set fast,
Nor splice a rope, nor ever climb the mast;
But set the mates together by the ears,
All for the honour of some three loud cheers.
When charity to neighbours all is lost;
When friendship to the winds and waves is toss'd;
When my dear Tankard, that I love so well,
Bears scandal which but reverend pens could tell—
Who would not rouse, that ever had a tongue,
And on such base behaviour chant a song?
Though but a swivel, I will have one fire,
Though death unstring the humble poet's lyre.
Ye sons of Yorkshire, now employ'd in trade,
The lowness of your wages long has made
Your children slaves; 'tis that which sinks us all,
And makes the glory of our kingdom fall.
Go ask the aged, and go ask the young,
You then would hear from ev'ry varied tongue
What numerous families—feel what parents will—
Could never live without the abused mill;
The present Ministry can never bind
Old Yorkshire's workmen,—strive to hold the wind;
For time is all the factory children's store,
Rob them of that, you make them doubly poor.
But now they see their portion is their time,
And neither speeches, noisy prose, nor rhyme,
Nor those who must express a feeling soul,
Shall o'er the hours of Britons have control.
There was a time when honour and applause
Attended Sadler in the factory cause;
But when at once the deep-laid plot was seen,
His glory vanished as it had not been:
The spell is broke, the factory children know:
These see they wanted honour from their woe,
They know except they to the mills are sent,
They must be houseless when there is no rent,
And greater joys have they each ended day
Than those who idle all their time away—
A glorious supper, and soft rest in bed,
Their labour not so hard as has been said;
Send them to place, each factory child would fain
Return with joy to factories again.
Ye injur'd masters! merchants have not chang'd,
Though spies through all your fact'ries have rang'd;
You all are needed; yes, a thousand more,
To give substantial blessings to the poor.
O! what a groan would echo through the land,
Were half the factories to make a stand!
Stewards would murmur, overseers would weep,
Farmers would say the land would never keep
A hundredth part; the workhouses would fill,
And pauperism would follow Sadler's bill;
Crowds would be wandering, not a place of rest,
The whole community would be oppress'd;
Yorkshire would sink, and all in rags be clad,
Their houses empty, and their features sad;
Trade, like an eagle flying through the air,
Takes its own course just when the order's there;
And where the wisdom now to bind in chains
The only hope which for us all remains?
Call forth a crowd, and let e'en folly speak,
Let thousands meet, the orators be weak,
But let them plead against existing laws,
The speakers sure will gain immense applause,
While truth itself is greeted with a hiss;
Yes, England, all thy learning comes to this.
Yet truth, though hidden in the deep profound,
A mighty conqueror will at last be found;
Bright as the sun she will at last burst forth,
'Midst all the Whigs and Tories of the North;
The injured parties yet again will shine,
And commerce glitter in a robe divine:
Then shall the factory children bright appear,
With food enough their drooping heads to cheer;
No useless speeches, and no clamours full,
From R--- O---, and from Mr. B---ll,
But labour with delight, and clothing new,
Will make them to their sorrows bid adieu.
The Patriot editor may write in vain,
The Leeds Intelligence at peace remain;
For chance of speaking they in vain may look,
They then will want nor O---r, Bull, nor Brook.
Sadler again may Newark represent,
And stay in London, till from Leeds is sent
A large petition long as Briggate Street,
That he will all his constituents meet.
With joy the children then shall laugh and sing,—
The palace of our great reforming king
Not half so happy, when our trade has smil'd,
As is the cottage of the factory child.
Then would the masters all as one agree
To cheer the children of each factory;
Meet and combine to make the children blest,
Wisdom their guide, for they must know the best;
The mighty system these alone can turn,
Though stewards babble, and though parsons mourn.
Forgive the bard, in truth he vents his grief,
From a kind public now he asks relief;
He is reliev'd, again his mind ascends,
Though poor again he rises by his friends:
Not yet forsaken, onward still he goes,
Nor heeds the scandal of malicious foes.
The mills he knows, and much of Yorkshire trade,
Let that revive, no factory child's afraid;
Without them can the farmer pay his rent?
How could they live if not to factories sent?
'Tis empty air, and parents all are free
To send them to the school or factory;
Then why this fuss—why factory masters blame,
For fleeting honour, for an empty name?
Have eight around your table all to feed,
Then would you know what parents feel indeed;
You then might scribble, and might meetings call,
But other work would be at Fixby Hall.

THE GATHERING OF THE CRAVEN WARRIORS.

THE WISH OF THE DRUNKARD'S FAMILY.

THE DRUNKARD'S PORTION.