John Engels Condition Of The Working-Class In Victorian England

dependence on Britain. For example, Engels in his Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 represents Irishmen as uncivilized, living in unacceptable dirty conditions, “a horde of ragged women sovereign and children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage”. After industrialization, there was no employment in Ireland, and local population was forced to move to England in search of work. They agreed on any salary and became a cheap working force, in comparison to skilled Englishmen. This brought competition for work among Englishmen and Irishmen. Engels narrates that this race contributed a lot to lower the salaries and lower the working-class. Their presence, their uncivilized existence and behavior had

Nicholls proposed a system of workhouses to struggle with famine, which were introduced in 1838. By using this system, the authorities decided to conduct a “correction” of population by formation of a new class, commercial farmers by destroying impoverished landlords and their tenants who could not pay rent, and became to be called “paupers”. According to Trevelyan, as a result of this policy, the socially degenerate classes can be weeded out. Workhouses were constructed in definite areas and populations from a union were supposed to relief there. The system included physical labor, segregation by gender, inadequate prison-like conditions. It was created to address pauperism, which was mostly treated not as poverty, but a disease because they were “a drain on the state’s resources” by Trevelyan, and needed special discipline. Workhouses accepted only paupers, because this is the pauper class that required reform, not the laboring poor. Therefore, they created such primitive and harsh conditions in them that deterred poor worker from entering. This is how distinction between paupers and poor was established. In addition, the policy of population remediation included agricultural

This could be called a “governentalization of famine”. This means, famine enabled the British to legitimately intervene into the Irish administration, since Poor Laws depended on the British State. This was a good opportunity for them to centralize power, since more and more people in need started depending on the state. According to Nicholls report, Poor law unions established had a form of a colony and resembled a kind of center of civilization. They had to “improve” not on the paupers themselves, but influence the general habits of population, the way to dress, and practices of farmers. For example, Nicholls asserted workhouses and Irish Poor laws will become important engines in bringing changes to the Irishmen. The biopolitics indeed meant biological improvement and has been pursued before the Famine, which in fact seems as intent to Anglicize