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<20 September 1918> |

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The other day a little circle gathered no matter | where - let us say in the Gove of | Dionysos - commenced discussion upon | Literature and Labor. The talk waxed warm. From | gentle "pardon me," and deferential "permit me to | correct" the tone of the controversy sadly and | rapidly deteriorated, until "Philistine," "mental | prostitute" and other similar terms of endearment | re-echoed amid the trees. At last a learned gentleman | capped all with an ill-mannered simile involving some | unsavory ladies, and the gathering was on the point | of breaking up (or out) in disorder, when the | ivy-crowned deity himself appeared. Appealed to by both | sides for a decision, he replied, diplomatically, but | nonetheless truly, that neither party knew much about | the subject under dispute; unfortunately, he himself | was busy over a by-election, but he would be pleased | to depute his trusted votary "Vigilant" to attend to | the matter.

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For the above, or some equally sufficient reason, | "Vigilant" has prefixed the heading | | "Great Poems of Progress" | to this article. The gentle - or | should it be "patient" - reader will | no doubt recollect that at various times this column | has been devoted to some great poem ~~ great as a | poem, and great as an intellectual impulse to the | people's cause. Robert Browning's | | "Lost Leader," Shelley's | "Masque of | Anarchy," Edwin Markham's | | "Man with the Hoe," have in | turn served as themes. | "The Cry of the Children," by Mrs. | Browning, is therefore the fourth on the list | - not, of course, in order of merit, | for although we might easily pick out our first | choice, we render due and sincere thanks that we are | not called upon to mark our order of preference | against the remaining candidates. We prefer to think | of them as of the Three Saints of Ireland, who all | were equal in glory - but Patrick was | the greatest.

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Like Shelley's | "Masque of Anarchy," Mrs. Browning's | poem memorialises a critical phase of working class | history. In 1819 the masses of England, weltering in | the starvation backwash of the Napoleonic wars united | in great meetings of protest throughout the land. The | story of the brutal treatment of a gathering in | Manchester, the peaceful nature of which was | guaranteed by the presence of the wives and children | of the demonstrators formed the incentive of | Shelley's poem. The men of England, of course did | not, for many a long year, hear the sound of the | stirring appeal that he addressed to them, | nevertheless, | In 1842 the penal laws against trade unionism were | repealed, and the unions, which had managed to live a | sort of life as secret societies, commenced to | blossom forth in startling fashion. Nine years of | rapid progress, including several successive stages | of federation, led to the actual realisation, in | 1833, under the guidance of Robert Owen, of the One | Big Union, preamble, constitution and all. On the | political side the Chartist movement had been | hammering away at the crumbling fortress walls of | privilege, and between the two forces, a distinct | advance was made in the direction of awakening, not | only the class-conscience of the worker, but also | (and of equal importance) the ethical conscience of | the community in general.

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One outcome of the spirit of the hour was the | first Factory Act. It limited the employment of women | and children in factories to twelve hours per day, | and prohibited the employment of children under nine | years of age. The measure was bitterly opposed, not | only by the employers, but also by the parents of the | wretched little slaves, to whom the loss of the | miserable pittance earned by their offspring meant | the difference, not between life and death, but | between less acute starvation and more acute | starvation. Its champions were the unions, the | Chartists, and a small group of humanitarians in | Parliament. Dissatisfied with the Act of 1833, the | various progressive groups carried on an agitation | for another decade. Their first success was the | granting of a commission, under the championship of a | close friend of Mrs. Browning (then Elizabeth Barret | - she did not marry the poet, Robert | Browning, until 1846). The revelations of Horne's | commission are fairly well known. They horrified all | England - except the philanthropic | employers who, then as now, kept their "hands" at | work only out of kindness of heart. Little mites, | barely able to toddle, worked day and night in these | industrial hells. The shift coming off duty were | immediately herded into the beds just vacated by the | on-coming shift, so that neither dormitory nor | workshop lost an hour's usance. In the mines boys and | girls of tender age performed the work of brute | beasts, harnessed to heavy trucks by means of a rope | attached to a leather belt round the waist. But | needless to dwell on these horrors. That the | limitation of hours of labor to twelve per day could | be regarded as an improvement is itself a stern | enough indictment of the conditions that | prevailed.

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Mrs. Browning was not, typically, a singer of | songs of revolt, as Shelley was. But for | "The Cry of the | Children" scarcely a line can be found in her | works that would indicate that her thoughts ever | dwelt anywhere but among flowers and streams, and the | magic and color of the brave days of old. But | perchance this very fact makes her contribution to | the Poetry of Progress all the more valuable. That | Shelley should voice the dumb throat of suffering | would be but the expected. Of Burns, of Hood, the | same applies. But that a singer of beautiful nothings | (yes, call me Philistine!) should leave her Lotus | Land of pleasant phantasy to enter the lists on | behalf of a cause, in its hour of need, speaks more | for that cause even than all the eloquence of its | lifelong votaries.

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This fragment will serve, let us trust, not as a | substitute for the whole poem, but to whet the | appetite of the reader for more.

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Mrs. Browning lived through the first sixty years | of the past century. She was, therefore, contemporary | Shelley, although the latter died at an early age in | 1822. Incidentally her last years were, like his, | spent in Italy, where the stirring events of that | country's wars of independence keenly excited her | interest. She died in 1861.