140

SUNDAY MARKETS

*

family would pass a dinnerless day. The system of paying the mechanic late on the Saturday night, and more particularly of paying a man his wages in a public house, when he is tired with his day's work, lures him to the tavern, and there the hours fly quickly enough beside the warm tap-room fire, so that by the time the wife comes for her husband's wages, she finds a large portion of them gone in drink, and the streets half cleared, so that the Sunday market is the only chance of getting the Sunday's dinner. Of all these Sunday-morning markets, the Brill, perhaps, furnishes the busiest scene, so that it may be taken as a type of the whole. * As you enter the Brill, the market sounds are scarcely heard; but at each step the low hum grows gradually into the noisy shouting, until at last the different cries become distinct, and the hubbub, din, and confusion of a thousand voices bellowing at once, again fill the air. The road and footpath are crowded, as on the over-night; the men are standing in groups, smoking and talking; whilst the women run to and fro, some with the white round turnips showing out of their filled aprons; others with cabbages under their arms, and a piece of red meat dangling from their hands. Only a few of the shops are closed, but the butcher's and the coal shed are filled with customers, and from the door of the shut-up baker's the women come streaming forth with bags of flour in their hands, while men sally from the halfpenny barber's, smoothing their clean

shaved chins.

6

Walnuts, blacking, apples, onions, braces, combs, turnips, herrings, pens, and cornplaster, are all bellowed out at the same time. Labourers and mechanics, still unshorn and undressed, hang about with their hands in their pockets, some with their pet terriers under their arms. The pavement is green with the refuse leaves of vegetables, and round a cabbage-barrow the women stand turning over the bunches, as the man shouts, Where you like, only a penny.' Boys are running home with the breakfast herring held in a piece of paper, and the side-pocket of the apple-man's stuff coat hangs down with the weight of the halfpence stored within it. Presently the tolling of the neighbouring church bell breaks forth. Then the bustle doubles itself, the cries grow louder, the confusion greater; women run about and push their way through the throng, scolding the saunterers, for in half an hour the market will close."* Would that all Sunday Trading closed with the markets! but, unhappily, thousands of half-shut or wholly open shops testify that this is not the case. And, by the way, what a simple folly it is of the tradesmen who desecrate the Sunday to take down only some of their shutters on that day! Is this their notion of Sunday observance? Do they think it a duty they owe to society, or is the grade of respectability among Sunday traders measured by the arrange

* "London Labour and the London Poor." By Henry Mayhew. Vol. i., p. 10.

142 ment of their shutters? Perhaps those who boast of their orthodoxy only keep the shop-door open; those who are more liberal, but yet withal moderately conservative in principle, take down two shutters; while your radical shop-keeper, who has no narrow views to obstruct him, glories in an open frontage, and laughs such pitiful habits to scorn.

SUNDAY TRADING IN THE PROVINCES.

If, in our survey of Sunday Trading, we leave London and turn our attention to other large and populous cities, we shall find that a better arrangement on the part of employers has produced a very different state of things from that depicted by Mr. Mayhew. In Manchester, which boasts a population of 400,000, including 80,000 Irish, Sunday Trading is rarely practised, for "the manufacturers generally pay on Friday; but as those who do not are compelled by the Factory Act to close at two o'clock on Saturday, it enables them to pay early." In Liverpool, Bristol, Bolton, Bradford, and Birmingham, in Sheffield, Leeds, Kidderminster, Stockport, Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other large towns, the habit of Sunday Trading is almost unknown; and we believe it will be found that, in all the places we have enumerated, the habit of Early Payment is equally prevalent.

Thus, then, we think it is evident that, although Sunday Trading might not be completely removed by the general adoption of an Early Payment of Wages, yet that it would go very far towards producing that

DUTIES OF MASTER TO MAN.

143

result, and there can be no question whatever that it would deprive the Sunday seller and the Sunday purchaser of their only tenable excuse.

How greatly, then, do all these statements tend to prove to employers their widely-extended power! how earnest should they make them to use that power worthily!

66

Perhaps," says Mr. Helps, "the greatest possible amelioration of the human lot is to be found in the improvement of our notions of the duties of master to man. It were hard to say what could be named as an equivalent for even a slight improvement in that respect, seeing that there is no day in which millions upon millions of transactions do not come within its limits. If this relation were but a little improved, with what a different mind would the great mass of men go to their work in the morning, from the slave who toils amid rice-fields in Georgia, to the serf in Lithuanian forests !"*

*The Claims of Labour," p. 259.

CHAPTER VIII.

"The evils which we have to contend against are to be met by a general impulse in the right direction of people of all classes." -CLAIMS OF LABOUR.

WELL-TO-DO people are apt to judge of the working man in a very foolish manner. They wonder at his predilections, at what they term the lowness of his tastes, at the ignorance he so often evinces of his own interests, at his want of foresight, at his general thoughtlessness and indifference. They declare that he is irreclaimable, that they at least can make nothing of him, and having impressed this belief distinctly on their minds, they are convinced that their responsibility, as far as he is concerned, is altogether at an end. But these respectable members of society, living in comfort and luxury, and placed beyond the reach of coarse temptations, should endeavour, before they pronounce sentence on the labouring man, to place themselves in his position, to realize his wants, to consider his trials, and to take an inventory of the few small pleasures that lie within his range. If they will not or cannot do this, they may pity the poor