h the words: "If you don't like to
be frizzled in my frying-pan, you can take a walk into the fire." The
silk weavers of London, and especially of Spitalfields, have lived in
periodic distress for a long time, and that they still have no cause to
be satisfied with their lot is proved by their taking a most active part
in English labour movements in general, and in London ones in particular.
The distress prevailing among them gave rise to the fever which broke out
in East London, and called forth the Commission for Investigating the
Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Class. But the last report of the
London Fever Hospital shows that this disease is still raging.

After the textile fabrics, by far the most important products of English
industry are the metal-wares. This trade has its headquarters at
Birmingham, where the finer metal goods of all sorts are produced, at
Sheffield for cutlery, and in Staffordshire, especially at Wolverhampton,
where the coarser articles, locks, nails, etc., are manufactured. In
describing the position of the workers employed in these trades, let us
begin with Birmingham. The disposition of the work has retained in
Birmingham, as in most places where metals are wrought, something of the
old handicraft character; the small employers are still to be found, who
work with their apprentices in the shop at home, or when they need steam-
power, in great factory buildings which are divided into little shops,
each rented to a small employer, and supplied with a shaft moved by the
engine, and furnishing motive power for the machinery. Leon Faucher,
author of a series of articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, which at
least betray study, and are better than what has hitherto been written
upon the subject by Englishmen or Germans, characterises this relation in
contrast with the manufacture of Lancashire as "Democratie industrielle,"
and observes that it produces no very favourable results for master or
men. This observation is perfectly correct, for the many small employers
cannot well subsist on the profit divided amongst them, determined by
competition, a profit under other circumstances absorbed by a single
manufacturer. The centralising tendency of capital holds them down. For
one who grows rich ten are ruined, and a hundred placed at a greater
disadvantage than ever, by the pressure of the one upstart who can afford
to sell more cheaply than they. And in the cases where they have to
com