id workers in Leicester, earning six, or with great effort, seven
shillings a week, for sixteen to eighteen hours' daily work. Formerly
they earned twenty to twenty-one shillings, but the introduction of
enlarged frames has ruined their business; the great majority still work
with old, small, single frames, and compete with difficulty with the
progress of machinery. Here, too, every progress is a disadvantage for
the workers. Nevertheless, Commissioner Power speaks of the pride of the
stocking weavers that they are free, and had no factory bell to measure
out the time for their eating, sleeping, and working. Their position to-
day is no better than in 1833, when the Factory Commission made the
foregoing statements, the competition of the Saxon stocking weavers, who
have scarcely anything to eat, takes care of that. This competition is
too strong for the English in nearly all foreign markets, and for the
lower qualities of goods even in the English market. It must be a source
of rejoicing for the patriotic German stocking weaver that his starvation
wages force his English brother to starve too! And, verily, will he not
starve on, proud and happy, for the greater glory of German industry,
since the honour of the Fatherland demands that his table should be bare,
his dish half empty? Ah! it is a noble thing this competition, this
"race of the nations." In the _Morning Chronicle_, another Liberal
sheet, the organ of the bourgeoisie par excellence, there were published
some letters from a stocking weaver in Hinckley, describing the condition
of his fellow-workers. Among other things, he reports 50 families, 321
persons, who were supported by 109 frames; each frame yielded on an
average 5.5 shillings; each family earned an average of 11s. 4d. weekly.
Out of this there was required for house rent, frame rent, fuel, light,
soap, and needles, together 5s. 10d., so that there remained for food,
per head daily, 1.5d., and for clothing nothing. "No eye," says the
stocking weaver, "has seen, no ear heard, and no heart felt the half of
the sufferings that these poor people endure." Beds were wanting either
wholly or in part, the children ran about ragged and barefoot; the men
said, with tears in their eyes: "It's a long time since we had any meat;
we have almost forgotten how it tastes;" and, finally, some of them
worked on Sunday, though public opinion pardons anything else more
readily than this, and the rattling noise of t