but I regret that I have not preserved it in his own Yorkshire dialect. He was a hand-loom weaver. Formerly by his individual efforts he had been able to provide himself with a superabundance of the necessaries, and many of the enjoyments and refinements of life. Now, with the assistance of his wife and three of his children, he only earns, on an average, ten or twelve shillings a week, working from twelve to fourteen hours a day. I inquired when his waistcoat was made. He said he could not tell. Can you guess within twenty years of the time?' The truth is,' said he, 'it was thrown off a few years ago by a young man in my neighbourhood, and I am wearing it ever since.' The neatness and care with which his trousers and coat were patched strongly impressed me with a conviction of the poor man's taste and inherent love of decency, and induced me to inquire whether he had any better clothes, and what place of worship he attended. He replied that these were the only clothes he had to go a bunting in' (ie., to wear on Sundays and other special occasions); and as they were not good enough to appear in at church, he generally went to chapel. What he was carrying when I met him was a piece of cloth, the weaving of which he had just completed. He was taking it to the master manufacturer, of whom he spoke in very high terms. He had to come into Huddersfield from a distance of six miles to get the materials for work, and of course the same distance to travel when it was finished, in order to get paid. He had, therefore, to travel, to and fro, twenty-four miles for every piece of work he finished; and taking into account the delays and disappointments which he experienced, he calculated that he lost at least two days every fortnight. He seldom partook of animal food, and the luxury of a blanket he had not enjoyed for years. He is acquainted with hundreds whose circumstances are equally wretched. He attributed all his misfortunes to the unrestricted action of machinery."

We may safely assume that out of several millions of once well-to-do hand-loom weavers (with whom we also count the poor weavers in India and Saxony, who perished by thousands in consequence of being displaced by the English cotton manufacture), everyone underwent a similar process of gradual impoverishment, degradation, and suffer

ing by slow starvation. When we consider that in this instance, every individual case of impoverishment presents already years and years of suffering, and when we, moreover, multiply this accumulation of years by the several millions of persons so afflicted, we arrive at so appalling an amount of misery that even the sufferings endured by the victims of inquisition and slavery lie light in the balance against it.

O Civilization! falsely so called, it is thou that art answerable for these inhuman inflictions of pain and degradation on thy own children; and if there should ever come a day of reckoning, the abettors and instigators of these cruel misdeeds and derelictions of the duty to humanity will surely be called to account; amongst whom there will certainly figure in the first rank of the deepest dye of guilt the authors, professors, disciples and propagators of the science of political economy -the dismal science-the science of inhumanity-alias "M'Crowdy's dreary science"!

Mr. F. B. Barton, a well-known positivist, says on this subject:-"To the trying vicissitudes to which the physical worker is subject we must not forget to add the wholesale displacement of his labour by machinery, which leaves him often suddenly and completely destitute, like a wrecked and shattered vessel stranded on the beach far above the rising tide. Surely it is neither just nor humane that they who have been working the best part of their lives in producing their country's wealth should be suddenly and unceremoniously cast aside to shift as best they can, because machinery has been introduced to supersede their labour; and to say that they will reap the benefit hereafter is mere mockery, for while the grass grows the steed starves.'

The migration of trades, although not acting so suddenly as the introduction of labour-saving machines, is even more injurious to the working population of the district where trade begins to decay, or to migrate, because its effects are not so discernible even to the working-men themselves; they obtain gradually less and less employment, but still cling to the hope that their trade will return, and that matters will improve. The silk weavers of Spitalfields have long and patiently put up with the gradual decline of their trade caused by the migration of the silk manufacture to Macclesfield and

other localities, and by the inroads of foreign competition, but have made no provision to follow the trade into those new localities, till at last they have become too poor to do so, but are obliged to betake themselves to the workhouse.

CHAPTER XXIII-INSUFFICIENCY OF WAGES.

THIS is especially true of the wages of agricultural

labourers, whose earnings are so very low that they scarcely provide the means of existence.

A country labourer in Brittany earns 91. a-day; an Irishman, before the famine, worked on the land for even less; and the agricultural labourers of England, generally with large families, get from 7s. to 10s. per week. In stating this low rate of wages, Louis Blanc adds this sympathetic reflexion: -"How many tears does each of these cyphers represent! what cries of anguish what cares violently driven down into the abysses of the heart!"

In 1874, Professor Fawcett argued that the position of the agricultural labourer in England is not so good as it once was; that is to say, he used to have a good many little privileges of which he now finds himself deprived. He has lost by the introduction of machinery much of the extra payment at harvest time, on which he could once rely for clearing off the year's scores, and commencing with a fresh start and a little money in hand. He does not get his old daily allowance of milk; and milk and butter, and most other farm produce, have risen very considerably in price. The consequence is that, even with 12s. a week, he would not now be as well off as he was some years ago.

The wages earned by miners, sailors, sawyers, stone-cutters coal-heavers, labourers who assist the building trades, paviors, gas-stokers, engine-drivers and their firemen, and of all those trades which combine heavy work with peril to limb and life, are decidedly too low. These trades, which, in justice to humanity, should be the highest paid ones, generally stand at the lowest level, when compared with other more fortunate employments.

The means of raising wages artificially by strikes will go a great way in the correction of the evil, but will lose its efficacy when all the trades, employments, and occupations will have succeeded in simultaneously raising their wages to a higher level; for it will then happen that the universal increase of wages will also have universally enhanced the price of all commodities. But as such a simultaneous action of all the trades for an increase of wages is, in the present isolated position of many, and the entire inability or neglect of others to form united action, a mere idle supposition, the means of obtaining better remuneration through strikes, arbitration, or voluntary concession by employers, will not lead to a general and simultaneous rise in the prices of all articles of consumption. Partial strikes must therefore be considered to be, on the whole, beneficial to the working classes.

However, as this benefit is derived by the working classes from the neglect and inactivity of a portion of the trades, social reformers question the equity of the high-paid artizan to live upon the low-priced articles produced by low-paid workmen.

Strikes are at best only a partial means of bettering the condition of the working classes. The emancipation of labour must be effected by other and more radical changes.

In correcting the insufficiency of wages, strikes have grappled with only one of the evils that oppress the workman, and can do little more. Even a general strike fund, for which the "International Working-men's Society" proposed to devise means at their last congress at Geneva, can afford no panacea for the wrongs of labour.

Strikes, partial or general, cannot lessen the monotony of labour which keeps pace with the increasing subdivision of work; they can prevent neither migration of trades nor concentration of manufactures, which cause loss of employment; they are powerless against the introduction of machinery, which supplants human labour; and they have no control over accidents, perils to limb and life, injury to health, and other evils and discomforts that endanger and imbitter the existence of the working-man.

These serious evils which lie beyond the scope of trades unions and strikes, are faults in the construction of the present

system of society; and it is on the question of their causes and effects, and their relation to justice and humanity, that the present social arrangement presents to social criticism the most vulnerable pointsof attack.

"But shall it ever thus remain !

Shall man contented be

To starve, creating wealth for those
Who mock his misery!

No! evry hour of time improves

The mighty wing of Mind,

And Man shall learn his power, and leave
His woes, his wants behind."

C. COLE.