Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic
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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: THE VICTORIAN WORLD Volume 49 SAMUEL SMILES AND THE VICTORIAN WORK ETHIC SAMUEL SMILES AND THE VICTORIAN WORK ETHIC TIM TRAVERS First published in 1987 by Garland Publishing, Inc. This edition first published in 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1987 Tim Travers All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-138-66565-1 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-315-61965-1 (Set) (ebk) ISBN: 978-1-138-64407-6 (Volume 49) (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-64408-3 (Volume 49) (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62905-6 (Volume 49) (ebk) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace. MODERN E U ROPEAN HISTORY Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic Tim Travers Garland Publishing, Inc. New York and London 1987 Copyright © 1987 Tim Travers All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Travers, Timothy. Samuel Smiles and the Victorian work ethic. (Modern European history) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Work ethic—Great Britain—History—19th cen tury. 2. Labor and laboring classes—Great Britain— History— 19th century. 3. Conduct of life. 4. Smiles, Samuel, 1812-1904. 5. Radicals— Great Britain—Biography. I. Title. II. Series. HD4905.T73 19897 306'.36'0924 [B] 87-25803 ISBN 0-8240-7835-7 (alk. paper) All volumes in this series are printed on acid- free, 250-year-life paper. Printed in the United States of America SAMUEL SMILES AND THE VICTORIAN WORK ETHIC Tim Travers University of Calgary PORTRAIT OF SAMUEL SMILES by GEORGE REID, c. 1880 (NPG 1377) NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE................................................................vi INTRODUCTION: Samuel Smiles and self-help, a re-evaluation ........ xiii Chapter I. SAMUEL SMILES AND THE VICTORIAN WORK ETHIC ..................... 1 (i) Work and Labour: a brief history........................ 1 (ii) The Victorian Work E t h i c .................................. 5 (iii) Samuel Smiles: Introduction and Chronology ............ AO II. SAMUEL SMILES AND THE ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT OF SELF-HELP: THE MORALITY OF WORK AND MAN1S PLACE IN SOCIETY, 1830-1859 . 63 (i) Religion, Unitarianism and the Structure of Society . 64 (ii) Ethics and the Philosophy of History..................... 81 (iii) Anthropology, Psychology and the Formation of Character. 97 (iv) Economics and the Industrial S ystem..................... 115 (v) Politics, Government and Class Conflict................. 137 (vi) Disillusionment, the role of the hero, and the importance of education, in the writing of Self-Help . .162 III. SELF-HELP AND THE SELF-HELP TRADITION ........................ 227 IV. SELF-HELP AND AFTER - BIOGRAPHY, TECHNOLOGY AND THE NEW MERITOCRACY....................................................251 V. CHALLENGE TO AN IDEAL: SOCIALISM AND THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD W O R K ....................................................284 VI. CONCLUSION: THE DECLINE OF SELF-HELP, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF AUTHORITY AND DEVELOPMENT...................................330 APPENDIX A: Work - A definition...................................... 347 B: 19th Century titles as heuristic device ................. 349 C: E.L. Bulwer, Lucretia, 1853 ............................. 350 D: Attribution of articles in Eliza Cook's Journal to Smiles 351 E: G.L. Craik, Passages of a Working Life, 1864; and G.L. Craik, The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties, 1830-1831 .............................................. 357 F: Sales and Printing of Self-Help, 1859-1894 ............... 360 G: Edward Carpenter, Robert Blatchford, Sidney W e b b ......... 364 A CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................................366 INDEX 377 SUMMARY Those Victorians who emphasised the meaning and value of work frequently did so as a reaction to industrial and social change. Four attitudes toward work were frequently expressed - a Traditional attitude which sought to retain the hierarchical status quo of work roles; a Promethean attitude which attempted to spiritualise and give a transcendent meaning to the task of work; a Rational attitude which set the seal of approval upon industrial needs and upon the commercial work and reward symbiosis; and a Protean attitude, very often expressed by the clergy, who tried to reintegrate work and religion through the internalisation of work, and through the linkage of work and character formation. Over and above these four attitudes, there was a general attempt to regulate the pace of social change by elevating the value of work, but moderating the reward of such work. Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) is best known for his book Self-Help (1859), which many have assumed to be an encouragement to social and financial success. However, Smiles actually argued against the single-minded pursuit of success, and in favour of the Protean formation of character as the ultimate goal in life. Self-Help, as the epitome of Smiles1 ideal of self-help, was in reality an attempt to reform and improve society through the moral reform of the individual. Nor was Smiles* ideal of self-help an isolated phenomenon; there were a number of other books written in the same self-help tradition of moral reform, character formation and the value of work in opposition to an idle aristocracy. Smiles* ideal of self-help evolved from the individualism of a Dissenting radical. The formation of the ideal can be traced through Smiles* early (1830-1859) ideas on Religion, Ethics, Psychology, Economics, Politics, and a final disillusionment with political reform, coupled with a strengthening of his individualism. After the publication of Self-Help, Smiles wrote biographies of engineers, inventors, scientists and philanthropists, whom he considered to be the members of a "natural aristocracy" of work and merit, better suited to lead the country than the idle and useless aristocracy of birth. Smiles* ideal of work and self-help was challenged in the 1880s by the contrasting Socialist idea of work. Three Socialists, Carpenter, Blatchford and Sidney Webb, present views both attacking and at variance with Smiles*. It was also in the 1880s that Smiles* books began to lose popularity, and the sales of Self-Help fell off. In the last analysis both the ideal of self-help and the Victorian work ethic were reactions to change, as was Smiles* journey from radical to conservative principles. In the middle of this journey Self-Help appeared, and reflected Smiles* combination of authoritarian and progressive ideas. Smiles* life was a microcosm of an early radical and reforming generation that in general retained its certainty but lost its relevance after mid century. FOOTNOTE ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations are used in the footnotes: Eliza Cookts Journal has been abbreviated to ECJ. The Smiles Collection (Archives, Leeds Public Library) has been abbreviated to Smiles Correspondence. Because much of Smiles1 correspondence is to and from his children, and there are often no surnames, the following is a list of Smiles’ children, with their nicknames: Janet Hartree (nee Smiles) Gingers William Smiles Willie, Billio Samuel Smiles Dtfff Jack Hartree (son-in-law) Jack The Eva Hartree Collection (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), had been abbreviated to Hartree Collection. The Works of Thomas Carlyle used are the collection of his Works put together by Dana Estes and Co., Boston, as the Centennial Memorial Edition in 26 volumes. In this study, the articles and books used from these Works have been given volume numbers relating to the entire series (e.g. Carlyle, "Jean Paul Frederick Richter" (1827), Works, vol. XV, p. 20; this article is in vol. I of Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, which are vols. XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII of the whole series). The Cobden Papers (West Sussex Record Office, Chichester) are all from vol. 17. PREFACE Work has compelled the time and energy of man for a major portion of his existence. Yet there have been few investigations of the history of work, apart from such studies as Weber and Tawney (and their critics) on the Protestant ethic, and in France an exceptional group of social studies, for example, P. Jaccard, Histoire Sociale du Travail (1960) and P. Wolff, Histoire genelrale du travail: l'age de l'artisanat (1960). In English, such enquiries are few and far between, but include a sketchy historical outline, translated from the Italian, A. Tilgher, Homo Faber, Work through the Ages (1930), the philosophical approach by H, Arendt, The Human Condition (1958), and two overviews, Stanley Udy, Work in Traditional and Modern Society (1970), and Edward Shorter (ed.), Work & Community in the West (1973).