manufacturers discovered that they could employ
women and children, and the wages sank to the rate paid them, while
hundreds of men were thrown out of employment. The manufacturers found
that they could get the work done in the factory itself more cheaply than
in the cutters' workroom, for which they indirectly paid the rent. Since
this discovery, the low upper-storey cutters' rooms stand empty in many a
cottage, or are let for dwellings, while the cutter has lost his freedom
of choice of his working-hours, and is brought under the dominion of the
factory bell. A cutter of perhaps forty-five years of age told me that
he could remember a time when he had received 8d. a yard for work, for
which he now received 1d.; true, he can cut the more regular texture more
quickly than the old, but he can by no means do twice as much in an hour
as formerly, so that his wages have sunk to less than a quarter of what
they were. Leach {196} gives a list of wages paid in 1827 and in 1843
for various goods, from which it appears that articles paid in 1827 at
the rates of 4d., 2.25d., 2.75d., and 1d. per yard, were paid in 1843 at
the rate of 1.5d., 1d., .75d., and 0.375d. per yard, cutters' wages. The
average weekly wage, according to Leach, was as follows: 1827, 1 pounds
6s. 6d.; 1 pounds 2s. 6d.; 1 pounds; 1 pounds 6s. 6d.; and for the same
goods in 1843, 10s. 6d.; 7s. 6d.; 6s. 8d.; 10s.; while there are hundreds
of workers who cannot find employment even at these last named rates. Of
the hand-weavers of the cotton industry we have already spoken; the other
woven fabrics are almost exclusively produced on hand-looms. Here most
of the workers have suffered as the weavers have done from the crowding
in of competitors displaced by machinery, and are, moreover, subject like
the factory operatives to a severe fine system for bad work. Take, for
instance, the silk weavers. Mr. Brocklehurst, one of the largest silk
manufacturers in all England, laid before a committee of members of
Parliament lists taken from his books, from which it appears that for
goods for which he paid wages in 1821 at the rate of 30s., 14s., 3.5s.,
.75s., 1.5s., 10s., he paid in 1839 but 9s., 7.25s., 2.25s., 0.333s.,
0.5s., 6.25s., while in this case no improvement in the machinery has
taken place. But what Mr. Brocklehurst does may very well be taken as a
standard for all. From the same lists it appears that the average weekly
wage of his weavers, after all ded