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A Worker's Pride:
Searching for Workers' Authentic Voices from the Industrial Revolution
A Reflective Essay
Allen Cross
Wingra School
Madison, WI
Early on in our seminar as we read and discussed the seminal historical texts about the Industrial Revolution in Britain, I observed that workers' voices were absent. Proceeding further along into our studies, it became obvious that none of the written information about the Industrial Revolution that we were encountering was produced directly by workers. Eventually, we did read a few transcriptions from investigatory commissions, newspaper accounts and legal cases that gave testimony of workers. I found these transcriptions to be very interesting given the absence of other written text by workers. I also have enjoyed the little poetry and song lyrics I have read produced by workers. However, I sought something more immediately associated with workers, something more authentic.
During the whole course of our studies, I thought I had found very little of what I will call, for lack of a better term, an “authentic voice” of the working class. So I have decided to investigate non-written textual sources for information about working class life.
After returning home and reflecting on my time in England, I realized that I had experience much non-written text material but had failed to “read” it as meaningfully as I initially could have. Here I describe my search for workers’ voices, suggest sources for further non-written textual information, and include strategies I am learning in order to use for “reading” those sources.
Our seminar group analyzed the painting Working (1852-63) by an artist associated with the Pre-Raphealites, Ford Madox Brown. We initially viewed a slide of the painting and later I had the opportunity to see it in the Manchester City Art Gallery. I was impressed with the vibrancy of color and the painterliness of the product. On whatever level, it seems an intelligent and beautiful piece, displaying workers as its central theme. During the course of the standard analysis format listing elements of the piece that are objective or subjective, I found that, while the painting was interesting and aesthetically pleasing, it gave a voyeuristic view of workers, presenting a supposedly heroic view of workers' and their lives. My initial attraction to the painting gave way to revulsion--everything about it suddenly seemed condescendingly wrought. My strong negative reaction may have been due to recognizing that from my own privileged position, the world too often seems a romantic place, a place where I can find heroism in the working class and beauty in the mundane. I do not believe Ford Madox Brown's intentions were to demean workers. Nonetheless, the phrase noble savage now comes to my mind when thinking about the subject of the painting.
One of the challenging questions the painting evoked for me was one I need to ask myself more regularly: How does my own history and experience effect my reading of a text? While our textual examinations in seminar sessions always included discussions about "the author's" background, I rarely questioned my own background in relationship to that same text. After asking questions and thinking hard about the painting, I have found myself attracted to its beauty once again, and feel grateful for the intellectual and emotional journey it has afforded me, even though I do not consider it an authentic example of workers' voice.
Since I am particularly concerned about locating a variety of perspectives about any given historical era or epoch, it is important to me to examine a variety of cultural artifacts from a range of experiences from the era. While our seminar discussions tended to revolve around information gleaned from written texts, in actuality, the integrated nature of the seminar gave ample opportunity to observe and collect and learn from a variety of sources. I wish I had done a better job of "collecting", to borrow language from anthropology, of the cultural production, both expressive (performative, temporary) and material (artifacts), of those that lived in that context. I have become increasingly interested in non-written sources of information and knowledge, largely because it yields information about those that express(ed) their ideas and experiences through different means--often the people left out of historical discussions.
Perhaps in response to Working, my first intent was to research aesthetically pleasing representations of the working class, produced by members of the working class. Much of this has to do with my personal interest in aesthetic expressions of information and knowledge. I have found that art is often produced to make sense of complex experiences and can serve as an important source for attempting to differently understand others’ experiences. This interest in locating what has been traditionally called folk, naïve or popular art, combined with my negative reaction to high art’s representations of the working class we encountered during our studies, spurred me on to find aesthetic artifacts that had been created by the workers themselves. Unlike in the case of "high" art, there appears to be little written information accompanying much of the cultural expression of the working class. This makes sense given the wealth of written materials created by and about the higher classes and the relatively high rate of illiteracy and oral tradition among the creators of folk art. It makes it even more imperative to learn other ways to read these artifacts. But to be truthful, after a cursory search, much of the material artistic production by workers that I located (mostly by way of photographs in books) did not appeal to me on an aesthetic level. For example, while I can appreciate the irony and craft that might have been involved in creating coal or slate carvings (creating something interesting out of something mundane), they do not appeal to me in terms of beauty.
I guess that I fall into “good” company when dealing with evaluation of aesthetic material production of the working class from a middle class perspective. As Emmanuel Cooper points out in his introduction to People’s Art, “Even such a distinguished commentator as Professor J.K. Galbraith doubted the creative talents of ‘the poor’. Speaking on Economics and the arts (1983) he said:
Deep in the inner soul and psyche of the poor there is—or must be—an instinctive artistic expression. There is folk art, proletarian art, and the art by implication, of the masses. Surely these are superior to bourgeois art, art that has been blighted by exposure to money…
It is only when other wants are satisfied that people and communities turn generally to the arts; we must reconcile ourselves to this unfortunate fact. In consequence, the arts become a part of the affluent standard of living. When life is meagre so are they." (1977)
The Hammonds wrote similarly about the lack of an expressive aesthetic sensibility in the working class when they discuss the effects of Methodism.
This religion did for the working class what Greek and Roman literature did for the ruling class: Drawing aside the curtain from a remote and interesting world, seeming thus to make their own world more intelligible. How far either class understood the world into which it was thus introduced is, of course, open to question, but nobody would deny that the imagination receive nourishment and something of the education that comes with an escape from visible surroundings. For the miner or weaver, the Chapel with its summons to the emotions, its music and singing, took the place that theaters, picture galleries, operas, occupied the lives of others. (1917, p.272-273)
I find this response to worker aesthetic condescending, and wonder how much of this belief mirrors my own methods of judging various cultural productions. As a measure and test of my present inability to read a working class aesthetic, I am making myself listen to more vocal folk music, knowing that that this form of art is a rich source of authentic text about working class lives. I sometimes find pleasure and reward in listening, but at the same time too often find myself making fun of it (e.g. referring to it as "wiggly voice" music). I will continue to try finding aesthetic value in ballads, work and labor songs. There appear to be plenty of sources for locating this form of working class expression.
My inability to read "folk" art aesthetically renders the use of aesthetics as a means for reading workers’ voices useless at this time. It may be my middle class educated aesthetic sensibility that keeps me from finding much of what I encountered from the Industrial Revolution folk tradition appealing. While my own history necessarily shapes and interferes with my “reading” of such non-written textual, I believe that with help I can change the way I comprehend and appreciate artistic expression. Bypassing the issue of "quality" and "beauty" temporarily aids my learning in this area, as it allows me to avoid, for the time being, the contentious, time-consuming, and perhaps even unproductive task of defining those terms. Until I become better versed analyzing artifacts aesthetically, I have decided to learn to employ other strategies to interpret various cultural products that have caught my attention.
E.P. Thompson already has been a good source for guiding me in this vein. I have dipped into his classic text, The Making of the British Working Class (1963), and read through the introduction and sections of his more recent Customs in Common (1993). I have much to learn from Thompson’s analysis of history and his description of the role the working class played during the industrial revolution. In Customs in Common, he states the importance he places on studying "folk" culture: "It is my thesis that customary consciousness and customary usages were especially robust in the eighteenth century: indeed, some 'customs' were of recent invention, and were in truth claims to new 'rights.'" (1993, p.1) He goes on to claim, "In earlier centuries the term 'custom' was used to carry much of what is now carried by the word 'culture'" (1993, p.2), and informs the reader about how "folk" culture has historically been viewed. Thus folklore at its very origin carried this sense of patronising distance, of subordination and customs as survivals. For 150 years the preferred methodology of collectors was to group such survivals as “calendar customs”, which found their last refuge in the deepest countryside. As one folklorist wrote at the end of the nineteenth century, his object was to describe:
The old customs which linger on in the obscure nooks and corners of our native land, or which have survived the march of progress in our city’s life.To such collectors we are indebted for careful descriptions of well-dressings or rush-bearings or harvest homes or, indeed, late examples of skimmington ridings. But what was lost, in considering (plural) customs as discrete survivals, was any strong sense of custom in the singular (although with many forms of expression), custom not as post-anything but as sui generis--as ambience, mentalite, and as a whole vocabulary of discourse, of ligitimation and of expectation. (1993, p.2)
Thompson cautions that custom was constantly in flux and warns not to over-generalize or systematize the idea of popular culture: "a culture is also a pool of diverse resources, in which traffic passes between literate and the oral, the superordinate and the subordinate, the village and metropolis; it is an arena of conflictual elements". (1993, p.6) It is his aim "that plebian culture becomes a more concrete and usable concept, no longer situated in the thin air of 'meanings, attitudes and values', but located within a particular equilibrium of social relations, a working environment of exploitation and resistance to exploitation, of relations of power which are masked by the rituals of paternalism and deference. In this way (I hope) 'popular culture' is situated in its proper mode." (1993, p.7)
I learn much from paradox or contradiction, and Thompson offers me a good one: "one characteristic paradox of the century: we have a rebellious traditional culture. The conservative culture of the plebs as often as not resists, in the name of custom, those economic rationalizations and innovations (such as enclosure, work-discipline, unregulated "free" markets in grain) which rulers, dealers, or employers seek to impose." (1993, p.9)
Through Thompson, I have been introduced to Gramsci's concepts of "bourgeois cultural hegemony" and "common sense." Stuart Hainsworth offers this interpretation of these concepts:
According to Gramsci's view there is not in any sense a single dominant class, but, rather, a shifting and unstable alliance of different social classes. The earlier notion of a dominant ideology is replaced by the idea of a filed of dominant discourses, unstable and temporary. … there are on the one hand the dominant classes who seek to contain and incorporate all the thought and behaviour within the terms and limits they set in accordance with their interests. On the other hand there are the dominated or subordinate classes who attempt to maintain and to further the validity and effectiveness of their own definitions of reality. There is therefore a continuing struggle for dominance between the definitions of reality (or ideologies) which serve the interests of the ruling classes and those which are held by other groups in society. Culture, according to this view, is seen as the product of a much more vigorous struggle than is suggested in, for example, Althusser's view of ideology. (2000)
While I have not fully made sense of all this yet, I will keep these critical ideas in mind as I proceed in my search for workers' voices.
I have personally become interested in researching the material cultural forms of canal boat art and trade union banners. In terms of expressive culture, effigy burnings, rallies, and rough songs intrigue me. The seaside holiday resort of Blackpool, pageants, fairs, and galas also captured my fancy, being combinations of both expressive and material culture.