440 PROSPECTS OF INDUSTRY 



have for ever put an end to the complaints against Machinery, 

 except on the part of the workmen who were immediately suffering. 

 The 150,000 workmen in the spinning-mills produce as much yarn as 

 could have been produced by 40,000,000 with the one-thread wheel." 

 We are not amongst those who deplore the progress of Machinery ; 

 but surely the past, present, and future conditions of the labouring 

 community deserve consideration ; and if this consideration be not 

 paid to them, a social crisis will result, that will " leave not a wreck 

 behind " of the idolised productive powers. 



The Hand-Loom Weavers are the relics and perpetuators of the 

 more primitive method of making cloth. This class of operatives 

 has been the victim of Machinery. It is customary to enumerate 

 a variety of causes which have tended to depress it, independently of 

 the growth of the power-loom ; and farther, the advocates of factory 

 labour very unscrupulously assert, that its miserable condition is in a 

 great measure the result of its own depraved habits. Thus Baines, 

 in his recent work, says, " the second cause of the low rate of wages 

 amongst the hand-loom weavers is, that their employment is in some 

 respects more agreeable, as laying them under less restraint than 

 factory labour : being carried on in their own cottages, their time is 

 at their own command : they may begin and leave off work at their 

 pleasure : they are not bound punctually to obey the summons of 

 the factory- bell : if they are so disposed, they can quit their loom 

 for the public-house, or to lounge in the street, or to accept some 

 other job, and when urged by necessity they may make up for lost 

 time by a great exertion : in short, they are more independent than 

 factory operatives; they are their own masters; and they have the 

 power, in case of urgent necessity or strong temptation, to embezzle 

 a few cops of their employers' weft in order to buy bread or ale, 

 which is a very common occurrence. All this makes the weaver's 

 occupation more seductive to men of idle, irregular, and dissipated 

 habits, than other occupations. It is a dear-bought miserable 

 liberty, but, like poaching or smuggling, it is more congenial to 

 some tastes than working under precise restrictions for twice the 

 remuneration/' 



Our readers will, as a matter of course, consider the Hand-Loom 

 Weavers, against whom is thus unceremoniously charged a disregard 

 for morals and for social comforts, as some miserable outcasts, some 



