LIFE OF COTTON FACTORY HANDS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XL, Issue 2949, 6 March 1884, Page 3

LIFE OF COTTON FACTORY HANDS.

An Australian gentleman now at Home is wrking a series of letters to a Melbourne journal, in one of which we find the following passages on the life of factory operatives in Manchenter : —

The cotton industry is in a very critical condition, and at this present writing (December llth^ a Btriko is about to begin, which cannot but add to the manifold distresses that threaten the grout city. The mill-owners say that they havo been carrying on their business at ii loss, which they can no longer eiiduro, and they have givon notice of a reduction of wages. At finit they wanted to reduce wages by ten per cent, but afterwards limited their demand to five per cent, backing it with a reminder that in 1880, when trade was temporarily brisk, tho operatives obtained an advance of five per cent, which they ought to bo contented now to forego. The employe™ nre certainly within the truth when they assert that they are working at a lons, for even this pays) them better than stripping altogether, which involves a ruinous deterioration of machinery. They are also quito right in their statement of tho caao that the operatives obtained a rise of wages four years ago. The latter, on their own behalf, point to tho increased price of provisions, which certainly aro tragically dear, if tragedy implies Buffering, an I suppose it does', and they allege that they aro only ono degree above starvation now, wherein I am bound to say they are about right. It takiis a clever and skilful man" to make more than a pound a week in a cotton factory, and an ordinary hand of full ago and long practice will seldom obtain more than from seventeon to nineteen shillings. This, with meat at I a shilling a pound and butior at nearly j two shillings, means an existence eked out tipun bread and potatoeii, with scanty clothing, crowded rooms, and little fuel. It also moans the degradation of childhood by its early employment in mill work, and it gives an unhealthy stimulus to early matrimony, since a boy of nineteen, earning Bixteeu or seventeen shillings pur week, hastens to marry, and combine his wages with those of a mill girl of sixteen or seventeen, who probably earns ton shillings or bo. Jor tho first few months the young couple get on pretty well. Their joint earnings are free from the contributions they have been accustomed to make to the exchequer of their parents, and they have, as they say, "nothing to pull thorn back." The first thing to " pull them back ' is the first baby, which is bound to make its appearance by the end of the year. Then tho young mother's waf;es are lost for fivo or six weeks, the young father's scanty comfortii aro reducad by the demand "baby" makes on the mother's time, and presently tho infant is turned over to the charge of some old woman, " a minder," who probably takes charge of a dozen miserable urchins in one wretched room, recoiviug sixpence a v/eek for each of them.

There are not many people out of Lancashire who would work yenr in and year out in the noise and fluff acid dust of a cotton factory for t.he scanty wage, that just pays for a frowsy room, a slop-made suit, and three meale a day of bread and potatoes and tea, with an added slice of bacon or cheese once now ani then, and a morsel of baked meat on highdays and holidays. Their enjoyments, when they have any, are almost sadder than their daily lives. Such diurnal trips to smokedried gardens, such an utter avoidance of tho gayer places, no dearer to come at, where their threadbare twee 3s and thin jtuffd will tub with -:ha broadcloths and 3ilks of tho Bhopkeeping classes, whom I think they quiutly detest. I profess that the sight; of a crowd of these hard-working people taking a brief rest is sadder than the spectacle of their work, so utterly unused do they seem to anything like real relaxation.

It is painful to see the physical deterioration that a couplo of generations of unwholesome town and facti>ry life and H of premature matrimony hive brought ibnut. Hare and there some traces of | 0 country vigor remain, some broad-1; .ihouldoted, big-boned man stands out abovo the crowd, or some plump woman looms largg in Saxon amplitude E.mong her mates. But, as a rule, the mon are small and even stunted in appearanco, although rosolute looking, and certainly intelligent. The girls look fagged, faded and worn, and certainly their daya are full of hardships. It is pitiful to sue how little comfort there ia in their lives, ho\v contrary to every ordinary rule of honlthy ox stence thoir habits nijceKsarily are. Few of them have the moat rudimentary knowledge of housekeeping. To make a cup of tea and fry a piuce of bacon in nearly ;he extont of their culinary accomplishments, and their only idnn of economy if privation which they boiir uncomplainingly, with a fortitude nobly pathetic, and untirely unconscious, [t is pkiful to soo the women just now, when all the Christmas preparations aro in full swing, peering into tho shop windows, and turning away without the chance of buying, or, almost worse still, compolltd to buy n bnro third of tho necessaries they urgontly require. They aro all magnificently independent too, wanting nothing of anyone, and determined not to allow anyone to compromiso them with tho appearanco of charily, while thoir lives are quite bb virtuous at tlio very leaat a3 those of the rost of thoir countrymon atid oountrywomon.