THE HISTORY OF THE CONTENTS. CHAP. WORKING CLASSES I.—THE SLAVERY PERIOD, II.—UNDER THE BARONS, IN SCOTLAND III.—EARLY LABOUR LEGISLATION, IV.—THE FORCED LABOURERS, . $£■ V.—THE DEMOCRATIC THEOCRACY, VI.—THE STRUGGLE IN THE TOWNS, VII.—EEIVING oi" THE COMMON LANDS, VIII.—THE CLEARANCES, IX.—THE POLITICAL DEMOCRACY, X.—THE ANTI-COMBINATION LAWS, XI.—UNDER THE CAPITALIST HARROW, XII.—THE GREAT MASSACRE, XIII.—THE UNIONS, I.—The Factory Workers, BY II.—The Hand-loom Weavers, . THOMAS JOHNSTON III.—Child Labour in the Factories, IV.—The Factory Acts, . V.—The Bakers, VI.-—The Colliers, . VII.—The Agricultural Labourers, VIII.—The Railwaymen, IX.—The Carters, . X.—The Sailormen, XI.—The Woodworkers, XII.—The Ironworkers, XIII.—Engineering and Shipbuilding, XIV.—The Building Trades, XV.—The Tailors, . PORWARD PUBLISHING COY., LTD., XIV.—THE COMMUNIST SEEDS OF SALVATION, I.—The Friendly Orders, 164 HOWARD STREET, II.—The Co-operative Movement, GLASGOW. III.—The Socialist Movement, . tfLf 84 THE HISTORY OF THE WORKING GLASSES. their freedom in the courts, it followed, as a general rule, that the slave was only liberated by death. The result of all these restric­ CHAPTER V, tions was that coal-mining remained unpopular and the mine-owners in Scotland were still forced to pay higher wages for labour than were THE DEMOCRATIC THEOCRACY. their English confreres. And so the liberating Act of 1799, which " The Solemn League and Covenant finally abolished slavery in the coal mines and saltpans of Scotland, Whiles brings a sigh and whiles a tear; was urged upon Parliament by the more far-seeing coalowners them­ But Sacred Freedom, too, was there, selves. There was no publio excitement, no public agitation, and If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneer." Lord Cockburn tells us* the matter was not "even mentioned in the —Burns: Scots Magazine; people cared nothing about colliers on their own " But, Bobln, your mither was auld and puir, account, and the taste for improving the lower orders had not then And the seasons cauld and keen, begun." There appears, however, to have been an anxiety on the The white, white snaw was on her hair, part of the miners to ensure that the new Act would not be burdened The frost film ower her een. by vicious and restrictive clauses, for some 600 of them in Lanarkshire She leeved on a handfu' o' barley meal, banded together, subscribed two shillings per head, invited the A drink frae the spring sae cauld— co-operation of all other colliers in Scotland, and sent a Glasgow O Bobin, Bobin, a heart o' steel lawyer to "lobby " the House of Commons during the passage of the Might bleed for the weak and auld ! Bill. The treasurer of the miners thus associating was Hugh Dun- O Bobin, Bobin, I kenna hoo The lee was faither'd first, bar of Westmuir, and the clauses particularly objected to were those But (whisper again, lest they ken, lest they ken !) fixing wages by Justices of the Peace, compulsion of miners to They thought the puir body accurst! work six days a week, and illegality of combinations. They thought the spell had been wrought in Hell, The miners were now free—freed in the cause of low wages—but To kill and curse and blight; the immediate effect was not, as the coalmasters hoped, a rush of They thought she flew, when naebody knew, labour to the now-dignified calling of winning coal, and a consequent To a Sabbath of fiends, ilk night. lowering of wages : it was a rush from the mines, a rush away from Then ane whose corn had wither'd ae morn the old servile associations, away from the old miseries and the old And ane whose kye sicken'd doon, degradations. Eobert Bald, writing in 1808, f declares: "Many Crept, scared and pale, wi' the leein' tale of the colliers have of late, particularly within these eight years past, To the meenisters, up the toon. betaken themselves to the work of common labourers at half their They bade her tell she had wrought the spell original wages " ; and farther, that men of other trades would do That made the tempest blaw, all kinds of dangerous work connected with a mine, but if they were They strippit her bare as a naked bairn asked to do the work of a collier "they would spurn the idea, even They tried her wi' pincers and heated aim with double wages." Dr. Robert Chambers relates an anecdote Till she shriek'd and swoon'd awa' ! which vividly presents to us the slavery we have just been consider­ O. Bobin, Bobin, . they doomed her to burn, ing and its comparative proximity to our own times: In the year Doon yonner upon the quay . 1820 Mr. Robert Bald, visiting the Clyde iron-works, came across an This night was the night . see the light! see the light! » How it burns by the side o' the sea ! old servant there, called "Moss Nook." The then proprietor of the —Robert Buchanan. Clyde iron-works was Mr. Colin Dunlop, whose father had taken a fancy to "Moss Nook," who had been the property of a coalowner, HILST it is no part of the proper business of this volume to Mr. M'Nair of the Green. Mr. M'Nair swopped or "niffered" his discuss the theological divisions, controversies and troubles slave "Moss Nook " for a donkey owned by Mr. Dunlop senior !| W which play so large a part in our national records, it is vitally necessary for the student of working class history, to under­ stand and to appreciate in its proper relationship the real meaning 'Works, ii., p. 6. and significance of the Covenanting struggles which convulsed ^General View oj the Coal Trade in Scotland, p. 76. Scotland from the downfall of Roman Catholicism in the sixteenth %Dom. Annals, iii., p. 260. 85 ^ 86 THE HISTORY OF THE WORDING CLASSES. THE DEMOCRATIC THEOCRACY. 87 century, to the triumph of a modified and somewhat chastened attwf>Io. Beath "had no church, and the indwellers having forgotten Presbytery in 1688; at least in so far as these struggles impinged thnro was a Sabbath, used that day for work and sports." Many upon the lives of the oommon people. True, no period of our inlniHtors did not obtain glebes until 73 years after the Reformation, national history has been moro frequently or more copiously written : itnd the acquisition was not obtained without local vexation, strife, a babel of warring partisan voioes still canvasses vehemently the and even bloodshed. The clergy carried arms for self-defence against virtues of the covenanting hill-folk; and laborious volumes ex­ the rich "evangelical" heritors,* and some of them were imprisoned pound the aims and objects of Recusants, Remonstrants, Solemn for their pulpit strictures upon the robbers. At Edinburgh, in front Leaguers, Protestors, and Malignants; but the whole period is still of Lord Lennox's lodging, a mob "with bear heads and laud voices to us something of a bottomless blank : something of an inscrutable Ming to the praise of God and the testifeing of grait joy and consola­ mystery. Be that, however, as it may, the Kirk of the seventeenth tion, the 124th psalm, ' Now Israel may say, and that trewlie' etc., century is ever with us, in our language, our habits, our traditions, till heavin and erthe resondit."f The old slavish subservience to the our lives ; it penetrates everywhere, prescribing for us the decorum nobility was being undermined by the preachers, who dared even in which we must perforce spend one-seventh part of our days, to inform the king that he was after all but "God's sillie vassal" ; enveloping us at baptism, at marriage, at death, and playing no and the Presbyterian form of Church Government, with its semi- mean or unimportant part in the education of our children and the democratic organisation and its perpetual insistence that Christ was making of our laws. its head and not King -James, was daily sapping the foundations The present day popular notion that the Scottish Reformation of feudalism.! This fact both king and nobles recognised. King was a vast democratic upheaval, is, as we have already proved, a James VI. advanced his claims to "divine right," and demanded an mere travesty of the facts. Hatred towards the financial exactions episcopal government in the Church which would, by giving him Of the old Church was undoubtedly strong among the commons; power to select the bishops, keep the whole Church organisation but the real motive force behind the Reformation was the aristo­ under his control. No bishop, he thought, would ultimately mean cracy, which had cast covetous eyes OJ the Church estates. The no king. But the nobles had not the faintest desire to see the bishops fomenters of the religious revolution in Scotland, says Dr. King firmly established again ; that might involve the return of the stolen Hewison, were not "the illiterate cobblers, tanners and abject per­ Church lands; and rather than suffer such a calamity they would sons :■" the evangelical party were "mostly nobles, owners of small tolerate within certain limits the unbridled tongues of the ministers estates, persons of means, and men of patriotic spirit ''*; but when, and the galling discipline of the presbyteries and the kirk sessions. the Reformation over, and the Church estates added to the rent And galling indeed to them must that discipline have been. Knox rolls of these worthy evangelicals, Knox and his friends suffered and his friends might not be able to secure for the Reformed Church speedy disillusionment. There was to be nothing for the kirk; the patrimony that was expected; but they could at least subject those who had expected otherwise being haughtily informed that the morals of professing Protestants to a disciplinary rigour and a they suffered from " ane fond imagination " ; there was to be nothing public examination that sent many an aristocratic delinquent half for the poor and nothing for education out of the revenues of the mad with rage and vexation.