Christopher Thomson was born in Hull in 1799, and worked as a sailor, bricklayer, pottery maker and sawyer before settling down as a housepainter in Nottinghamshire in the 1830s. In the extract below, he recounts his experience as a sawyer in Hull in the early 1820s. What can historians learn from the extract below about industrialisation and the working class in the British Isles in the period 1789–1840? “I, being destitute of employment, and no prospect of obtaining any, except by leaving England, which I was unwilling to do, Mr. Leaf [father-in-law] undertook to teach me the art of mahogany and veneer sawing … In a pecuniary point of view, my new trade was not so remunerative as it had been before the invention of the circular saw. Our wages now averaged about two pounds each per week, and in some ‘good jobs,’ amongst which the sawing of deep logs of Honduras wood into planks for coach panels may be particularized – we sometimes earned as much as five pounds each per week; unfortunately we did not always use it wisely. Drinking was the curse of our trade, and nearly all who embarked in it spent one-half of their wages in that debasing practice. It was often the boast of some of the sots, that the last Saturday night's ‘shot’ had taken the greater part of their week's money. […] The meridian of veneer sawing was passed when I commenced the business; the mills were gradually superseding hand labour, and loud and deep were the curses our craft was daily venting against the new invention. They rejoiced at every accident that befell the machinery, and did not scruple, whenever an opportunity offered, to play off any diabolical scheme, that might injure or destroy their works … Has such wanton devastation been of any advantage to the perpetrators? Has it prevented the growth and the perfection of saw-mills? … I would answer no! … Then how long is the present system of the labourers working, and the machinery reducing their rewards, to continue? Just so long as the artisans will allow it, but no longer! [...] Until education shall teach a majority of the toiling artisans of England to become calm, sober, thinking, and self-dependent men, uniting themselves into a deliberative league for the emancipation of labour, they will continue to be at the mercy of the mammon-lovers, who thrive by their ignorance and division. All the clap-trap cries of ‘charters,’ votes, or sects yet raised, will be useless … When the religion of doing ‘unto other men as we would that other men should do unto us’ is understood – is felt, instead of being merely talked about on Sundays – then will the capital which has too long been a task-master, become an universal help-mate. [...] Then, instead of hastening the squalid half-reared child to the black night-day of a coal pit, or the body-warping toil of the factory, or to the mind-stultifying drudgery of the farm-stead, because the degraded parents cannot spare out of their ill- requited labour a sum sufficient for its food and schooling, until it shall be matured in mind and muscle – then, instead of these blighting miseries, the mission of machinery will be understood …! When unity has taught the artisans, that machinery, with its Herculean sinews, and myriad-multiplying fingers, can produce and re-produce enough for all the nations of the earth … then will the artisans learn that this slave-subduing power was destined at once to feed and to civilize the world, and that by an honest distribution of the produce of this mighty iron-heart of commerce, shall all mankind be made happy!” Thomson, C. (1847) The autobiography of an artisan. Shaw and Sons, pp. 165–171
Christopher Thomson was born in Hull in 1799, and worked as a sailor, bricklayer, pottery maker and sawyer before settling down as a housepainter in Nottinghamshire in the 1830s. In the extract below, he recounts his experience as a sawyer in Hull in the early 1820s.
What can historians learn from the extract below about industrialisation and the working class in the British Isles in the period 1789–1840?
“I, being destitute of employment, and no prospect of obtaining any, except by leaving England, which I was unwilling to do, Mr. Leaf [father-in-law] undertook to teach me the art of mahogany and veneer sawing … In a pecuniary point of view, my new trade was not so remunerative as it had been before the invention of the circular saw. Our wages now averaged about two pounds each per week, and in some ‘good jobs,’ amongst which the sawing of deep logs of Honduras wood into planks for coach panels may be particularized – we sometimes earned as much as five pounds each per week; unfortunately we did not always use it wisely. Drinking was the curse of our trade, and nearly all who embarked in it spent one-half of their wages in that debasing practice. It was often the boast of some of the sots, that the last Saturday night's ‘shot’ had taken the greater part of their week's money.
[…]
The meridian of veneer sawing was passed when I commenced the business; the mills were gradually superseding hand labour, and loud and deep were the curses our craft was daily venting against the new invention. They rejoiced at every accident that befell the machinery, and did not scruple, whenever an opportunity offered, to play off any diabolical scheme, that might injure or destroy their works … Has such wanton devastation been of any advantage to the perpetrators? Has it prevented the growth and the perfection of saw-mills? … I would answer no! … Then how long is the present system of the labourers working, and the machinery reducing their rewards, to continue? Just so long as the artisans will allow it, but no longer!
[...]
Until education shall teach a majority of the toiling artisans of England to become calm, sober, thinking, and self-dependent men, uniting themselves into a deliberative league for the emancipation of labour, they will continue to be at the mercy of the mammon-lovers, who thrive by their ignorance and division. All the clap-trap cries of ‘charters,’ votes, or sects yet raised, will be useless … When the religion of doing ‘unto other men as we would that other men should do unto us’ is understood – is felt, instead of being merely talked about on Sundays – then will the capital which has too long been a task-master, become an universal help-mate.
[...]
Then, instead of hastening the squalid half-reared child to the black night-day of a coal pit, or the body-warping toil of the factory, or to the mind-stultifying drudgery of the farm-stead, because the degraded parents cannot spare out of their ill- requited labour a sum sufficient for its food and schooling, until it shall be matured in mind and muscle – then, instead of these blighting miseries, the mission of machinery will be understood …! When unity has taught the artisans, that machinery, with its Herculean sinews, and myriad-multiplying fingers, can produce and re-produce enough for all the nations of the earth … then will the artisans learn that this slave-subduing power was destined at once to feed and to civilize the world, and that by an honest distribution of the produce of this mighty iron-heart of commerce, shall all mankind be made happy!”
Thomson, C. (1847) The autobiography of an artisan. Shaw and Sons, pp. 165–171
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