1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:03,480
Speaker 1: Hey, history fans, here's a rerun for today, brought to

2
00:00:03,480 --> 00:00:07,440
Speaker 1: you by Tracy V. Wilson. Welcome to this Day in

3
00:00:07,520 --> 00:00:10,360
Speaker 1: History class from how Stuff Works dot com and from

4
00:00:10,360 --> 00:00:12,600
Speaker 1: the desk of Stuff you missed in History Class. It's

5
00:00:12,640 --> 00:00:14,880
Speaker 1: the show where we explore the past, one day at

6
00:00:14,880 --> 00:00:17,079
Speaker 1: a time with a quick look at what happened today

7
00:00:17,079 --> 00:00:25,000
Speaker 1: in history. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson,

8
00:00:25,120 --> 00:00:29,280
Speaker 1: and it's Deceper nineteenth. A Christmas Carol was published by

9
00:00:29,360 --> 00:00:32,120
Speaker 1: Chapman and Hall on this day in eighteen forty three.

10
00:00:33,040 --> 00:00:36,760
Speaker 1: It's really likely that you have heard this story. Benees

11
00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:39,519
Speaker 1: are Scrooge, a cruel and stingy man is mean to

12
00:00:39,640 --> 00:00:42,800
Speaker 1: his employees and everyone else around him, and on Christmas

13
00:00:42,840 --> 00:00:45,280
Speaker 1: Eve he's visited by the ghost of his former partner,

14
00:00:45,360 --> 00:00:49,120
Speaker 1: Jacob Marley, followed by the spirits of Christmas past, present

15
00:00:49,200 --> 00:00:53,479
Speaker 1: and future. It was written, of course by Charles Dickens,

16
00:00:53,479 --> 00:00:57,440
Speaker 1: and it's become a Christmas classic, and right from the

17
00:00:57,520 --> 00:01:00,800
Speaker 1: beginning when it was published, it was an inn blockbuster.

18
00:01:01,320 --> 00:01:03,800
Speaker 1: Dickens got the idea for this in the spring of

19
00:01:03,800 --> 00:01:07,360
Speaker 1: that year after he read a report on child labor.

20
00:01:08,080 --> 00:01:12,200
Speaker 1: At this point, child labor was extremely common. Increased urbanization

21
00:01:12,400 --> 00:01:15,520
Speaker 1: and industrialization in the nineteenth century had led to children

22
00:01:15,520 --> 00:01:20,080
Speaker 1: working in factories, often working incredibly long hours and dangerous

23
00:01:20,120 --> 00:01:24,919
Speaker 1: and inhumane conditions, often with things like rules that seemed

24
00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:29,759
Speaker 1: draconian and just truel. There were assembly lines hauling cole

25
00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:33,959
Speaker 1: dipping matches. A lot of these working children were even

26
00:01:34,120 --> 00:01:37,800
Speaker 1: housed above the factory and dormitories, so their work was

27
00:01:37,840 --> 00:01:41,160
Speaker 1: basically their whole lives. And for people who were poor

28
00:01:41,240 --> 00:01:44,560
Speaker 1: and could not find work, there were workhouses, and they

29
00:01:44,560 --> 00:01:49,240
Speaker 1: had appalling conditions. Going to a workhouse was actually required

30
00:01:49,280 --> 00:01:52,000
Speaker 1: by law under the Poor Law of eighteen thirty four.

31
00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:54,400
Speaker 1: If you were poor and had no work and couldn't

32
00:01:54,400 --> 00:01:56,400
Speaker 1: support yourself, you had to go to the poorhouse. But

33
00:01:56,560 --> 00:02:00,560
Speaker 1: intentionally the poorhouses were so awful no one wanted to

34
00:02:00,600 --> 00:02:04,080
Speaker 1: go there. At first, Dickens had planned to write a

35
00:02:04,120 --> 00:02:06,400
Speaker 1: pamphlet that was going to be called an Appeal to

36
00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:09,960
Speaker 1: the People of England on Behalf of the poor Man's Child,

37
00:02:10,600 --> 00:02:12,959
Speaker 1: And like its name suggests, this is going to be

38
00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:16,840
Speaker 1: a pamphlet about the horrors of poverty and child labor.

39
00:02:17,480 --> 00:02:20,000
Speaker 1: But soon he decided that a work of fiction might

40
00:02:20,040 --> 00:02:23,000
Speaker 1: be more effective, and he wrote that work of fiction

41
00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:24,920
Speaker 1: over just a couple of months in the fall of

42
00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:29,000
Speaker 1: eighteen forty three. The big moral of this story was

43
00:02:29,080 --> 00:02:32,200
Speaker 1: that it was up to employers to treat and pay

44
00:02:32,280 --> 00:02:36,880
Speaker 1: their employees well on a more practical level than this

45
00:02:37,200 --> 00:02:40,840
Speaker 1: benevolent goal of encouraging people to be more generous towards

46
00:02:40,880 --> 00:02:44,280
Speaker 1: the poor. Dickens also needed to pay his own bills,

47
00:02:44,680 --> 00:02:47,080
Speaker 1: particularly after spending a lot of money on a tour

48
00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:50,200
Speaker 1: of the United States the year before, so he wrote

49
00:02:50,200 --> 00:02:52,880
Speaker 1: a story that he thought would sell, and it did.

50
00:02:53,880 --> 00:02:56,880
Speaker 1: The first print run of A Christmas Carol was six

51
00:02:57,040 --> 00:02:59,440
Speaker 1: thousand copies and it was sold out in a week.

52
00:03:00,320 --> 00:03:03,959
Speaker 1: By the next year, there were fifteen thousand copies in print.

53
00:03:04,680 --> 00:03:08,200
Speaker 1: Although Dickens didn't actually earn as much money off of

54
00:03:08,200 --> 00:03:10,760
Speaker 1: it as he wanted to, a lot of this was

55
00:03:10,880 --> 00:03:14,280
Speaker 1: really of his own making. It was at his request

56
00:03:14,320 --> 00:03:17,880
Speaker 1: that they had used very fancy gilded bindings, with the

57
00:03:17,880 --> 00:03:21,440
Speaker 1: book itself full of etchings and woodcuts, which were very expensive.

58
00:03:21,480 --> 00:03:24,280
Speaker 1: He wanted this book to be beautiful, and it was,

59
00:03:25,120 --> 00:03:28,600
Speaker 1: but it was also expensive, and he even ordered last

60
00:03:28,639 --> 00:03:31,720
Speaker 1: minute changes to the title page and the end pages.

61
00:03:31,800 --> 00:03:34,400
Speaker 1: Because the first ones didn't measure up to what he wanted.

62
00:03:35,360 --> 00:03:38,440
Speaker 1: He had hoped to make a thousand pounds half of

63
00:03:38,520 --> 00:03:42,000
Speaker 1: this book, and instead his first payment was for a

64
00:03:42,080 --> 00:03:45,360
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty seven pounds. Even though he didn't make

65
00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:48,120
Speaker 1: nearly as much money as he wanted, though, he was

66
00:03:48,320 --> 00:03:52,200
Speaker 1: really really happy with how well this book sold and

67
00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:54,640
Speaker 1: with how much of an impact it seemed to make

68
00:03:54,680 --> 00:03:58,960
Speaker 1: in people's humanitarian perspective on the issue of poverty and

69
00:03:59,080 --> 00:04:03,200
Speaker 1: child labor. Today, there are so many adaptations of this work,

70
00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:06,840
Speaker 1: and that started pretty much immediately. People were writing plays

71
00:04:06,880 --> 00:04:08,800
Speaker 1: that were based on a Christmas carol right from the

72
00:04:08,880 --> 00:04:11,720
Speaker 1: very beginning. Today there are plays and movies and TV

73
00:04:11,800 --> 00:04:14,640
Speaker 1: shows and the musical Scrooge. It goes on and on

74
00:04:14,840 --> 00:04:18,560
Speaker 1: and on. It's hard to get through a Christmas season

75
00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:22,520
Speaker 1: without being reminded of it somewhere. Thanks very much to

76
00:04:22,560 --> 00:04:26,080
Speaker 1: Christopher Hasciotis for his research work on today's show. Thanks

77
00:04:26,080 --> 00:04:28,800
Speaker 1: to Casey Pegraham and Chandler Mays for their audio work

78
00:04:28,880 --> 00:04:31,640
Speaker 1: on this show. And to Casey for being so gracious

79
00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:34,080
Speaker 1: that he never corrected me when I pronounced his name

80
00:04:34,160 --> 00:04:36,760
Speaker 1: the way my high school health teacher did instead of

81
00:04:36,760 --> 00:04:39,000
Speaker 1: the way he does. You can subscribe to the Stay

82
00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:42,120
Speaker 1: in History Class on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, i Heeart

83
00:04:42,200 --> 00:04:44,640
Speaker 1: Radio app, and wherever you get your podcasts, and tune

84
00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:48,039
Speaker 1: in tomorrow for the first in a series of exits