The Match Girls | Hacker News Reader

The Match Girls

historic-uk.com

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Wow, phossy jaw sounds horrendous https://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/new-morbid-ter...

(cancer caused by working with white phosphorus for the matches)

It sounds similar to a ceramics art teacher getting silicosis in Austrailia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-27/ceramics-teacher-sili...

Technology natives do have to be concerned with carpal tunnel syndrome as a workplace hazard or ergonomic deficiency as well.

Or the radium girls

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

https://www.damninteresting.com/undark-and-the-radium-girls/

I've always worried about phosphoric acid in colas and other soft drinks.

Luckily, that's different.

Just like eating salt is different from taking sodium or chlorine straight up.

Ironically McDonald's treats their salt packets like a restricted chemical.

"You have someone certified in the use of said salt packet? Yes? Then you'll receive exactly one salt packet at the bottom of the bag where it will be covered by a protective layer of the food you ordered. Please pull forward to the next window to submit your tax ID and a copy of your hazardous materials certification."

Ba dum tiss.

My sincerest apologies Hacker News.

And few decades later across the pond: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

The thing that is surprising to me is that people were so desperate for these horrible factory jobs for so long. I think I need to read up on history again to figure out what was going on in the agriculture side that made people flood into cities, making labor expendable for factories.

Mechanization.

It was more than that. It was opportunity for advancement from the previous millennium or more of stasis. You could save up and advance, even if it was small. On a farm each generation had less farmland to farm (let's say you have 100 acres, and you have 4 heirs each with now 25 and so on... but let's say two because death and also pursuit of something else, so 50, but keep on doing that every generation)

What millennium of stasis? See the 'Real Life' section on https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis (of all things).

However you are right that the Industrial Revolution sped up the pace of change.

Yes, it's overstated but never the less until then (ind revolution), life was very agricultural (that did not change appreciably) and thus centered around land (ownership and control). One cannot make more land. As the population grows there was less land per person to develop, maintain and extract sustenance and growth from, so to the factory it was.

Most importantly, life on a farm did not improve much, metal instruments did replace more rudimentary farm implements. There were additional advances here and there such as rotating crops, better ploughs drawn by oxen --never the less, you'd follow the cows typically barefoot and you'd suffer from any adverse weather event, too early, too late, a frost, no lifting of the rains, etc. One's fortune was at the whims of the weather and the pace was unrelenting. In the Winter it was time for repairs and household chores that waited a year.

A number of my great grandparents homesteaded in Michigan in the late 1800s. They didn't make more land exactly, but they converted land to agriculture.

The mechanization of much farming preceded that, as various horse and steam powered machinery was developed to harvest grains.

https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqr...

In an agricultural society land is everything. As you go down through generations the land is split into smaller plots for the heirs. Some had no option but go into the clergy, or alternate occupation. The industrial revolution opened the doors to lots of folk who otherwise would be completely destitute. Back in those days a merchant "afford" a houseboy or housemaid because people were really poor. The factory, though demanding, boring and dangerous by today's standards was a better alternative to many.

> As you go down through generations the land is split into smaller plots for the heirs.

That depends on local inheritance customs.

I think the effect is the same. Either plots get smaller or the other heirs have to seek alternative work to even more devalued work on the farm.

> The thing that is surprising to me is that people were so desperate for these horrible factory jobs for so long

We folks on HN (well, anyone who's even remotely related to tech) just tend to forget how good we have it. You might want to look up working conditions in meat plants, healthcare, warehouses, construction... in today's day and age.

Sure, it's not as bad as painting with Radium (although, back then they did not know how bad it is), the jobs might not be an immediate health hazard, but there are still plenty of people out there working under miserable conditions for terrible wages.

this lecture on how "all of us folks in tech" are ungrateful bastards does not seem relevant to the question asked, or particularly necessary here.

One major factor in Britain was the Inclosures Act[1] which led to the dispossession and displacement of many peasants.

In my country, the Irish Potato Famine[2] forced many peasant farmers to leave the land as an alternative to disease and death. Since the industrial revolution only really took off in the north-east of the island, many emigrated to the industrialising cities of Britain and North America. The driving factor was that the natives did not have any rights to the land they farmed; ownership of land was concentrated in the hands of Anglo-Irish absentee landlords.

This situation was not unique in 19th Century Europe: the Prussian Junker[3] class had landed estates in much of the Baltic region, e.g., modern day Estonia and were not known for their humanitarianism. The lands of Polish farmers were owned by Prussians, Russians and Austrian landlords. Modern-day Czechia was ruled by the Austrian Empire and Slovakia by Hungarians. In Russia, the peasants were serfs as until 1861 when they were emancipated and (nominally) became free citizens[4].

For the other side of the pond, I suspect that the large numbers of Europeans emigrating to North America in the hope of a better life contributed to a surplus of labour, allowing industrial capitalists to get away with treating their workers so badly.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junker_(Prussia)

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_reform_of_1861

the Irish Potato Famine happened 40 years before the time the article describes, so that doesn't really explain the population movement in the UK and Ireland in 1888.

We see this repeating itself in China. However bad and dreary life is in a factory, working on a subsistence farm is worse with worse outlook than most factory jobs in the city.

A factory job give you the opportunity to advance. Maybe you sneak in some study time here and there, maybe you meet like minded people, maybe you meet the person you _want_ to spend your life with. In a rural setting with isolation and insularity and lacking transportation, your options are severely curtailed and likely end up like your parents or worse.

I'd say mostly we 'saw' this repeating itself in China.

China has made most of that transitions already by now.

Yeah, but it's still happening and you have dirt poor farmers in the hinterlands --they are hidden from view (not talked about much) and cityfolk are willfully blind to their very existence.

But, we still have that in the USA in the hinterlands of the Appalachian mountains.

All I'm saying is were seeing the same movement from farms to terrible factory work that e saw in the West during the ind revolution as we're seeing today in China because despite the awful conditions these conditions are better than working on a farm. We're talking about the desperation that drives these young adults from their farms to work in factories under poor conditions.

I'm not versed into the question, but 19th century 13 yo girls or even early 20th century women don't feel like having a lot of say on what job they will take and won't be pounding the fist on the table when things don't go the way they want. Which makes it so much more poignant when they go on strike.

My hunch would go towards poor families being ok with the girls working away somewhere for 14 hours, even for very low wages, as they won't have money to send them to school anyway, and won't benefit from having them stay at home either.

My mental image of being a poor kid in that period,, especially a girl, is pretty grim to be honest.

> [...] won't be pounding the fist on the table when things don't go the way they want.

I think what zokier was aiming at was that even meek people will quietly pick a better option, when it's available. Especially when it's available before you even sign up at the factory.

Some people might have been surprised once by the working conditions in these factories. But news travels and people gossip, so people in general will have had reasonably accurate expectations: yet, they still accepted those jobs. Zokier asks: why?

My best guess would be a that lack of news traveling and general awareness, combined with horrible conditions all over the board, making other low level jobs not that much better.

From the article:

> The 1888 match girl strike [...] most tangible impact was perhaps the growing public awareness about the conditions, lives and health of some of the poorest in society whose neighbourhoods were a far cry from those of the decision makers in Westminster.

Great question! 1888 was way after the famines, so the food supply was relatively steady and there was no outright death and hunger in the UK and Ireland's countryside. So, why?

The only thing I can think of is that with this steady food supply and improvements in agriculture, the population of England, for example, almost doubled in the second half of the 19th century. So even if the city dwellers (whether born poor in the city or transplanted from Ireland) wanted to go back and get a safer (but not necessarily easier) job at a farm, their services may have simply not been required there, since all cultivated land was already taken care of by the existing workforce (again, improvements in agriculture and rural population growth, too). So even if they went on this "job hunting" trip into the countryside, which itself was pretty monumental since they probably had to beg to survive along the way (they didn't have Linkedin or what have you back then to look for jobs), it probably would have resulted in nothing, so they had to settle for a low-qualified city job.

Read about the "enclosures" and about the "draining of the fens" in Britain. In many cases, rural life had to be destroyed before factory work became necessary for survival (not desirable).

Somewhat related: my favorite Disney short is called The Little Matchgirl. It’s set to a Borodin string quartet, which I think is an excellent choice. If you haven’t seen it, I think it’s worth 6 minutes of your time.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ybb3s

The original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen is also worth a read. In my opinion one of his best short stories.

https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheLittleMatchGirl_e....

It always made me cry.

I was not ready to cry today :(

... starring Mulan. Or, no, Pocahontas?

WOW, what a read! I remember reading about Annie Besant in school. Historical events like these have a lot to teach us even today. With so many countries still running sweat shops with inhuman labour conditions it's increasingly important to be aware of the origin of a product. I recently had a training from my company about "Modern Slavery" and it was quite eye opening. We deal with it every day without even realising it.

What surprised me is the lack of any of it in the WikiPedia page of "Bryant and May". I'd have thought this was an important piece of information about their history. I've never edited anything on WikiPedia but will do my best add a section about it.

Curious timing of this article, possibly related to the plot of Enola Holmes 2, recently released on Netflix.

Co-incidentally a local historical society had a talk about the Match Girls:

https://youtu.be/AnnnY7MnAK8

I remember my History teacher talking about the Match Girls were on strike until they struck a deal; although that lame joke seems out of place.

The factory and strike recently gained a heritage blue plaque. https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-match-girls-b...

Louise Raw wrote a book about the Bryant and May matchwomen and their 1888 strike, Striking a Light, which I recommend: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/striking-a-light-9781441114266...

Ugly business is industrialization. I suppose it's seems to be the most noble application of technology to avoid the techno-horrors of the past in the future. But there are always newer, greater techno-horrors emergent. In fact, one might say that techno-horror is a fundamental emergent property of the universe.

Any technology (physical, social, philosophical) we create has the ability to wreak havoc on equilibrium (natural, societal, or otherwise). We are fundamentally unequipped to restore equilibrium because that process takes the unwilling participation of all agents. So I think all technologies have a way of creating an existential threat, obviously some more than others.

My own internal sci-fi version of the future involves us creating replicating but non-intelligent technology that outlasts us.

Another free sci-fi premise while I’m on a roll is consciousness becoming such a good interpreter of reality (that sees everything so clearly) such that it evaporates. The map has become the territory.

/confused rambling

You mean, because by observing everything we affect it? Like Heisenberg's uncertainty

Interesting ideas. Would you expand on your last point? We're you meaning an artificial consciousness becomes so good at interpreting the things around it that the consciousness itself evaporates?

Sure. So consciousness is maybe very loosely the ability for an entity to model and interact with its surroundings. On the low end we have a rock. It is the product of its surroundings and therefore you could say it has some kind of model, but no interaction. Then you have a worm, it can do some basic tasks and has a kind of plan. Humans are further along. But at some point if an entity has such a rich model of its surroundings and can control it so effectively, the line between it and its surroundings starts to blur. It’s able to effect more nuanced change at a greater and greater distance. It is less and less surprised by new events. And I guess in this way I imagine that it starts to merge with its surroundings.

Thinking about entropy, a single drop of dye in a glass is very high entropy, but the drop is very confined to a particular place. This is like the rock. Then as it swirls around the complexity increases, even though entropy is decreasing. This high complexity is like us. But as the drop of dye becomes totally intermixed the entropy is at its lowest, but the dye is evenly mixed through the entire solution. It stops making sense to ask “where is the dye?” because it is everywhere.

Diversification is an interesting innovation in the 21st century.

Getting stuck as a head-in-a-fishbowl doesn't sound that appealing :/

The only horror here is shit employers and bastard politicians who don't care for worker's rights.

It's time to join a union HN

Were these young girls better off or worse off than their similarly aged counterparts who laid around naked at Mr. Epstein's pool parties down on Pedophile Isle waiting for a rich businessman or high-profile politician to service?

Erm, what point exactly are you trying to make here?

Is getting laid a legitimate way to get paid?

That's all.

Victorian sexual mores likely prevented the 'match girls' of that era from becoming the match.com girls of today's vibrant online dating scene.

"With the support triggering public debate, the management were keen to play down the reports, claiming it was “twaddle” propagated by socialists like Mrs Besant"

I thought this was a new technique

The playbook of the powerful has almost always been the same since the beginning. Divide and conquer, have the different parties your want to control blame each other for the problems that are ultimately your fault, make personal attacks against your enemies according to the values of the people you oppress, and ultimately, blame your opponents for the crimes you've committed, to take attention away from your own atrocities.

I think a good summary of a lot of this is "lie enough until they believe you".

Those women were not much better off than slaves.

How the hell was this different or even better than communism? It's slave labor.

When they went on strike, the government didn't murder them. Try starting a trade union in Cuba.

This is a gross misrepresentation of the history of capitalism. In the western world, calling on the army to stop a workers uprising was a common feat up to WWII and some variation of that still occurs frequently in France via the gendarmerie (admittedly with "less-lethal" weaponry).

The most famous example of that in the USA is certainly the battle of Blair Mountain. [0] The Chicago haymarket affair, while not about soldiers shooting workers, did result in innocent men condemned to death sentence. [1] There's likely more but i wouldn't know.

I'm from France, and there's a lot of it over here too. The democratic Paris Commune was overthrown by the military, killing tens of thousands of civilians. [2] The strikes of Fourmies [3] and Draveil [4] were also literally shot down.

We could also name the Vital Michalon or Rémi Fraisse killed by law enforcement (specifically grenades) for their political activities, or the revolutionaries sitting in jail long after their sentences ended (Action Directe, George Abdallah). And of course the countless "ordinary" murders by law enforcement in popular districts, and the incredible massacres perpetuated both by police/military and fascist militias in the context of colonization/decolonization such as the Setif massacre [5] where the Algerians celebrating the end of WWII and the defeat of nazism were shot and many thousands were killed.

Of course, to be fair, such massacres are a common feature of repressive regimes all around the world... and leninist regimes as well, such as during the Kronstadt Commune [6] or the Makhnovshchina in Ukraine. [7] But as any clearheaded thinker will tell you, most so-called "communist" regimes had nothing to do with communism and everything to do with State capitalism [8], which explains the many similarities.

Still, despite my criticism of their regime, you could be surprised to see how trade unions fare in Cuba, what the working conditions are like there, and that they have one of the best healthcare systems around the planet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusillade_de_Fourmies

[4] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%A8ve_de_Draveil-Villeneu...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina

[8] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-i...

I almost forgot a more recent and shocking example well after WWII. The general strike of October 17th 1961 [0] called upon by the Algerian FLN as a demonstration for independence... Dozens of thousands joined, and hundreds were drowned by the police and thousands detained (then deported) in the same locations that the nazi regime used (mostly stadiums). All this under the orders of Maurice Papon [1], who was a higher-up nazi collaborator in the police during WWII.

Please keep such examples (merely isolated anecdotes in a sea of troubling events) in mind when considering there's aspects of history we are not taught in schools and in mass media. If you're from the USA, i heard good things about Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Papon

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_Un...

> When they went on strike, the government didn't murder them.

This is either profoundly ignorant or you are trying paper over the violent history of anti-worker action with weaselly over-specificity.

> the United States has had the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...

It was 1888. Life was shit everywhere.

Communism destroyed lives in the 20th century. The Khmer Rouge was the late 1970s.

Well into the 21st century, the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Kurdistan or Libya may have a lot to say about the respective capitalist overlords who invaded them.

The people of capitalist Mexico are still mourning their "disappeared" (read murdered by the military) Ayotzinapa students, while in capitalist France/USA slave labor (no healthcare, pay under minimum wage) goes on in the prisons...

If you'd like to read a pertinent criticism of "communist" States i strongly recommend Emma Goldman's take: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-i...

OP must have watched the Enola Holmes 2 movie on Netflix... the case she solves is all about match girls.

https://www.cbr.com/enola-holmes-2-sarah-chapman-true-story/

Funny timing, literally watching it right now.

It just came out I think so not much of a coincidence :)

not to mention, what's an amazing coincidence for him is perhaps an unusually small number of people watching compared to the size of the audience here.

...based on this true story.

Just saw it. Good movie and history lesson

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