[Rarebooks] FS: Two 19th C. Books on the Laboring Classes

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

THOUGHTS ON POPULATION AND THE MEANS OF COMFORTABLE SUBSISTENCE; with
Suggestions regarding an increased supply and lessened cost of food for
childhood and the industrial classes.  By Agrestis.

London; Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green: 1863.

A wide-ranging reformer’s view of what 1860s England needed to do to
improve the lives and productivity of the “laboring” classes, mostly
through efforts to improve their food and drink. Much time is spent on
milk and the problems with its production, adulteration and distribution
and how they might be improved. The author points out that not only are
milk and vegetables healthier to consume than meat, but that their
production takes fewer resources. He promotes brown bread over white and
the production of honey and cheese, and speaks at length about the use of
sewage as a fertilizer.

The author also explores social problems, and deplores what he terms
“suicidal” efforts by landlords and counties to remove farmers from their
lands and send them abroad so their large families will not be “burdens on
the parish rates”. He makes a plea for the education of the lower classes
and the removal of impediments to their marriage, and spends some time
describing and praising Britain’s overseas colonies in Australia. In an
addenda he mentions the need for pure water and recommends a system of
iron drinking fountains supplied by wells.  OCLC locates 8 copies.

Hardcover.  5"x7.5", viii + 206 pages; errata slip; embossed green cloth
with gilt titles, as issued; covers lightly rubbed, a bit of wear and soil
here and there, but a very nice copy.  [06062]  $300.00


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Miles, Henry A.  LOWELL, AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS.

Lowell; Powers and Bagley: 1845.

An early survey of the textile mill city of Lowell, one of the testing
grounds for the 19th-century "paternalism" experiment with factory
workers.  Lowell was created almost from open fields along a riverbank as
a textile city just a few decades prior to the publication of this book,
and it was very much a work in progress at the time of writing.  The lives
of the mill girls were ordered by the factory owners to the 'nth degree,
and every minute of their day was accounted for -all in the name of
bettering their lives.  This attractive handbook includes a history of the
development of the city, a description of its factories and mills, of the
lives of the workers, an interesting chapter on the "Moral Police of the
Corporations", and a folding map.  There is also an attractive folding
view of the city as seen from the opposite river bank.

Hardcover.  4"x6.5", 234 pages, folding map; folding plate.  Embossed
cloth covers, as issued, covers a bit dusty, spine head a bit threaded, a
few internal spots, but a nice copy.  [03067]  $150.00

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JOSLIN HALL RARE BOOKS, ABAA
Fine books of the 16th-20th centuries
on the decorative and fine arts & design

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