ly after work, does harm. But it has
long been, and still is, the habit of the mechanics in a number of trades, to
make a holiday of Monday; it has even a local name--it is called Shackling
day, "Shackling" being a term which can be perfectly translated by the French
verb, flaner. A Shackler must drink, if not smoke.

The more plentiful and pressing the work is, the more determined are the men
engaged to make Saint Monday, and very often Tuesday and Wednesday also.

The time so lost when trade is at high water, and the losses imposed on the
manufacturer by the consequent non-fulfilment of contracts, eventually form a
second drawback on the earnings of the workman, in addition to the day's
wages lost, and the days' wages spent on "shackling days."

Secondly, it has been proved that a large percentage of the married women
engaged in work factories are compelled so to work to support their families
in consequence of the improvidence of their husbands.

Thirdly, in the same way children, from a very early age,--seven years, and
even younger,--work in order to support their improvident parents.

Women engaged in work all day cannot keep comfortable houses for their
husbands. An uncomfortable home drives a husband, no matter of what rank, to
the tavern or the club.

The custom of sending children to work from the time they can earn sixpence
a-week, renders education impossible. In the evenings they are only fit to
sleep: on Sundays, in fine weather, the majority very naturally prefer
walking in the fields to the dry task of acquiring knowledge, the value of
which they are not sufficiently educated to appreciate.

The effect of the want of education and the habit of idle Mondays on the male
population is sufficiently lamentable. A man who can neither read nor write,
in addition to the abstract pleasure Saxons have in drinking, finds an
occupation and a substitute for ideas in a pot and pipe. The effect on the
female population is even more baneful. They are so fully occupied that they
have neither time to write, nor to cook, to read nor to sew, and they become
wives and mothers with no better qualification for their important duties
than girls educated in a fashionable school, without being able to obtain the
assistance of servants and governesses.

Wives engaged in factories are obliged to leave their children to the care of
strangers or elder children, themselves scarcely above the age of children.

One consequ