THE LANCASHIRE FACTORY LASS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14925, 24 February 1912, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE LANCASHIRE FACTORY LASS.

Ik the ordinary woman engaged in a Lancashire spinning-mill can make 17s a week she is doing not amis*. Girls make from Bs. Ring spinners may make up to £1. but they, of course, are few. There »re whole districts in which no ring spinother hand, does better. It is open to her to earn as much as a man earns if she is ning is done. The woman weaver, on the capable enough. As a youngster\she goes tinder an older operative, who keeps her busy doing little things about the looms.

After she shows herself capable she. is givefl charge. of one loom, then of two. and so on till she can look after four loom* at once. Her wages are based on the cloth she weaves, and one loom will yield a weaver up to. say, 7s 6d a week at its best. A man weaver can do but little, better, so it will surprise no one to learn that of the 160.000 weavers now stopped work in Lancashire quite 100,000 are women and girls.

Cheery, affectionate, honest souls they are too, and bonny enough when they leave their curling-pins and papers at home. • But that is only when they are "dressed."

Walk down, say, Arlington's main street on a Saturday noon and then again on .Saturday niglu. Von would never believe alt these lapses were the wine people as had passed you on their way irom the inula at mid-dav. Harris tweed coats trim black bouts, kid gloves and the atest saucy contrivance in hats, and thev look very different. ' *

Woman life in the mill, hard as it is. is not a melancholy one. You may go into a Meaving-shed , now and a .-'""" and find cake and ginger beer perched" in .ale places on the looms. There will have been a weavers wedding. The bride will have contributed a shilling or two, her friends m the mill will have* supplied cop. pew apiece, and with the fund thus raised the event is being duly celebrated. Or at Christmas, supposing you are a man, be careful how you go the rounds of the mill. Mistletoe is hanging in crafty, unseen places, and whether vou are plain weaver or managing director vou are liable, i! you stand under it, to* bo kissed, and to pay a. fair penalty to the weavers in goods or in coin for "the privilege. ' Then there is the weavers' holidav sometimes at the firm's expense. That 'is always a very breezy and jolly affair, with lots of singing and good, honest skylarking with the boys. There is too, tlie annual ' going away" to the sea, or further, iou may meet a Lancashire weaver in Switzerland now and again, and she. will be trim and neat, and will have left her Lancashire accent at home—for she can speak the Kings English as well as "th' parson" when she likes. The jova of "wakes," of the girls' club nights, of the reading-class, the dances, and' so on—all these things you can imagine. On the whole, rather a bright picture you say. Perhaps so, but. a truer one for that than any presentation of the. weaver and the weaver's life as solemn and dour and glum. She has her bad moments of course. She is -~v i ng one of them now i poor lass, and i:. ocarina up bravely