employed in the cotton manufacture are able to earn over three pounds a week, according to the number of the children employed.[1] Their annual incomes will thus amount to about a hundred and fifty pounds a year—which is considerably larger than the incomes of many professional men—higher than the average of country surgeons, higher than the average of the clergy and ministers of all denominations, higher than the average of the teachers of common schools, and probably higher than the average income of the middle classes of the United Kingdom generally.
[Footnote 1: A return of seven families employed by Henry Ashworth, New Cayley Mills, Lancashire, is given in the Blue Book, entitled, "Report of the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867, containing the Returns relative to the New Order of Reward," p. 163. Of the seven families, the lowest earnings per family amounted to £2 14s. 6d.; and the highest to £3 19s. a week.]
An employer at Blackburn informs us that many persons earn upwards of five pounds a week—or equal to an average income of two hundred and sixty pounds a year. Such families, he says, "ought not to expend more than three pounds weekly. The rest should be saved. But most of them, after feeding and clothing themselves, spend the rest in drink and dissipation."
The wages are similar in the Burnley district, where food, drink, and dress absorb the greater part of the workpeople's earnings. In this, as in other factory districts, "the practice of young persons (mill-workers) boarding with their parents is prevalent, and is very detrimental to parental authority." Another reporter says, "Wages are increasing: as there is more money, and more time to spend it in, sobriety is not on the increase, especially amongst females."
The operatives employed in the woollen manufacture receive about forty shillings a week, and some as much as sixty,[1] besides the amount earned by their children.
A good mechanic in an engine shop makes from thirty-five to forty-five shillings a week, and some mechanics make much larger wages. Multiply these figures, and it will be found that they amount to an annual income of from a hundred to a hundred and twenty pounds a year.
[Footnote 1: See the above Blue Book, p. 57, certifying the wages paid by Bliss and Son, of Chipping Norton Woollen Factory.]
But the colliers and iron-workers are paid much higher wages. One of the largest iron-masters recently published in the newspapers the names of certain colliers in his employment who were receiving from four to five pounds a week—or equal to an annual income of from two hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds a year.[1]
[Footnote 1: Richard Fothergill, Esq., M.P. He published a subsequent letter, from which we extract the following:—
"No doubt such earnings seem large to clerks, and educated men, who after receiving a costly education have often to struggle hard for bread; but they are nevertheless the rightful earnings of steady manual labour; and I have the pleasure of adding that, while all steady, well-disposed colliers, in good health, could make equally good wages, many hundreds in South Wales are quietly doing as much or more: witness a steady collier in my employment, with his two sons living at home, whose monthly pay ticket has averaged £30 for the past twelvemonth.
"Another steady collier within my information, aided by his son, h as earned during the past five months upwards of £20 a month on the average, and from his manual labour as an ordinary collier—for it is of the working colliers and firemen I am speaking all along—he has built fifteen good houses, and, disregarding all menaces, he continues his habits of steady industry, whereby he hopes to accumulate an independence for his family in all events."]
Iron-workers are paid a still higher rate of wages. A plate-roller easily makes three hundred a year.[2] The rollers in rail mills often make much more. In busy times they have made as much as from seven to ten guineas a week, or equal to from three to five hundred a year.[3] But, like the workers in cotton mills, the iron workers are often helped by their sons, who are also paid high wages. Thus, the under-hands are usually boys from fourteen years of age and upwards, who earn about nineteen shillings a week, and the helpers are boys of under fourteen, who earn about nine shillings a week.
[Footnote 2: See Messrs. Fox, Head, and Co.'s return, in the Blue Book above referred to. This was the rate of wages at Middlesborough, in Yorkshire. In South Wales, the wages of the principal operatives engaged in the iron manufacture, recently, were—Puddlers. 9_s_. a day; first heaters on the rail mills. 8_s_. 9_d_. a day: second heaters, 11_s_. 7_d_.: roughers, 10_s_. 9_d_.: rollers, 13_s_. 2_d_., or equal to that amount.]
[Footnote 3: Even at the present time, when business is so much depressed, the mill-rollers make an average wage of £5 10_s_. a week.]
These earnings are far above the average incomes of the professional classes. The rail rollers are able to earn a rate of pay equal to that of Lieutenant-Colonels in Her Majesty's Foot Guards; plate-rollers equal to that of Majors of Foot; and roughers equal to that of Lieutenants and Adjutants.
Goldsmith spoke of the country curate as "passing rich with forty pounds a year." The incomes of curates have certainly increased since the time when Goldsmith wrote, but nothing like the incomes of skilled and unskilled workmen. If curates merely worked for money, they would certainly change their vocation, and become colliers and iron-workers.
When the author visited Renfrewshire a few years ago, the colliers were earning from ten to fourteen shillings a day. According to the common saying, they were "making money like a minting machine." To take an instance, a father and three sons were earning sixty pounds a month—or equal to a united income of more than seven hundred pounds a year. The father was a sober, steady, "eident" man. While the high wages lasted, he was the first to enter the pit in the morning, and the last to leave it at night. He only lost five days in one year (1873–4)—the loss being occasioned by fast-days and holidays. Believing that the period of high wages could not last long, he and his sons worked as hard as they could. They saved a good deal of money, and bought several houses; besides educating themselves to occupy higher positions.
In the same neighbourhood, another collier, with four sons, was earning money at about the same rate per man, that is about seventy-five-pounds a mouth, or nine hundred pounds a year. This family bought five houses within a year, and saved a considerable sum besides. The last information we had respecting them was that the father had become a contractor—that he employed about sixty colliers and "reddsmen,"[1] and was allowed so much for every ton of coals brought to bank. The sons were looking after their father's interests. They were all sober, diligent, sensible men; and took a great deal of interest in the education and improvement of the people in their neighbourhood.
[Footnote 1: "Reddsmen" are the men who clear the way for the colliers. They "redd up" the debris, and build up the roof (in the long wall system) as the colliery advances.]
At the same time that these two families of colliers were doing so well, it was very different with the majority of their fellow-workmen. These only worked about three days in every week. Some spent their earnings at the public-house; others took a whisky "ploy" at the seaside. For that purpose they hired all the gigs, droskies, cabs, or "machines," about a fortnight beforehand. The results were seen, as the successive Monday mornings come round. The magistrate sat in the neighbouring town, where a number of men and women, with black eyes and broken heads, were brought before him for judgment. Before the time of high wages, the Court-house business was got through in an hour: sometimes there was no business at all. But when the wages were doubled, the magistrate could scarcely get through the business in a day. It seemed as if high wages meant more idleness, more whisky, and more broken heads and faces.
These were doubtless "roaring times" for the colliers, who, had they possessed the requisite self-denial, might have made little fortunes. Many of the men who worked out the coal remained idle three or four days in the week; while those who burnt the coal, were famished and frozen for want of it. The working people who were not colliers, will long remember that period as the time of the coal famine. While it lasted, Lord Elcho went over to Tranent—a village in East Lothian—to address the colliers upon their thriftlessness, their idleness, and their attempted combinations to keep up the price of coal.
He had the moral courage—a quality much wanted in these days—to tell his constituents