158 REPORT — 1856. 



1850, 1851, and 1852 12*. per week. 



1853 14s. „ 



1854 17s. „ 



1855 17s. „ 



1856 J7s. „ 



Thus the rise has been greater on unskilled than even skilled labour, being 5s., or 

 upwards of 40 per cent. These labourers are almost exclusively Irish ; and, strange to 

 say, that while in the north of Ireland, within 30 miles of Belfast, labourers can be got 

 from Is. to Is. 6d. per day, or 6s. to 9s. per week, with the cost of transit per steam to 

 Glasgow of from 2s. 6d. to 4s., the flow of Irish immigration to Glasgow has greatly 

 diminished. 



It would be easy for me to multiply examples of the advance which has taken 

 place in the rate of wages from almost every class of workmen during the last five 

 years, an advance which has now reached the long sinking employment of the hand- 

 loom weaver. For a long period the position of those connected with this last 

 employment had been gradually lowering, till at length it became pitiful indeed. 

 The facility with which the art can be learned, the numbers which unfortunately 

 rushed to this work, frequently creating an equal competition between the man and 

 the child, coupled with the competition of power-loom labour, are assuredly some 

 of the causes which have produced the great fall during these thirty years past in this 

 species of handicraft. But whatever the causes may have been for sinking the value 

 of hand-loom labour, it can scarcely be denied that the average rate of weekly wages, 

 as furnished me by two or three of the leading manufacturing houses in Glasgow, 

 being at present from 6s. to 7s. Id. per week, is indeed a miserable pittance even 

 when measured by the reduced prices which have taken place in every article of 

 consumption and clothing since J 825, when (he wages was 13s. 6f/. per week. The 

 following is a progressive statement of the average wages earned by the hand- 

 loom weavers from 1825, marking the periods when the reductions took place : — 



1848 6s. Od. 



1851 5s. 8d. 



1852 6s. 9c?. 



1853 7s. Od. 



1856 7s. Od. 



1825 13s. 6d. 



1827 9s. 0^. 



1829 7s. 6d. 



1831 6s. 6d. 



1834 8s. 0«^. 



1837 7s. 0<^. 



It will be observed from the foregoing statement, that the late advance in wages has 

 even reached those miserably paid workmen, the wages in 1851 being 5s. 8c?. per 

 ■week, whereas, in 1856, the average is 7s. Id. It is gratifying to state that the hand- 

 loom weavers are fast diminishing in Glasgow, although in the villages and 

 towns around they still maintain their numbers. That they should do so, is 

 at first sight surprising, when other branches of manufacture offer such high 

 •wages for labour. There is, however, some compensation to the hand-loom weaver 

 which the factory workman and the artisan do not enjoy — I allude to the feeling 

 that they are their own masters, can work short or long, late or early, in the garden 

 or in the shop, and that without any detriment to their web — that they can employ 

 their wives and children either as adjuncts or assistants in their own labour, and can 

 thus eke out a tolerable subsistence without the restraints imposed on many of their 

 more money-gaining brethren. 



The deduction which may be gathered from the foregoing statements and figures is 

 simply this : — That during the last five or six years a gradual and permanent rise seems 

 tohave been established in allwages connected with the leadingmanufacturesof Glasgow, 

 and we may almost add, throughout Great Britain and Ireland ; and that, too, even in 

 the face of the reduction which has been made in the hours of labour. And were we 

 to carry the inquiry further, and place in a comparative table the price of the chief 

 articles of consumption which enter into the domestic economy of the artisan and 

 labourer, since the period when the policy of this country was directed, to relieve not 

 only all the great necessaries of life from fiscal burdens, but to reduce, as far as pos- 

 sible, the duties exigible on those articles of luxury, such as tea, sugar, cofiee, &c., 

 •which more particularly enter into the consumption of the labouring classes ; — it may be 

 fairly affirmed that this most important body of the community is at the present mo- 

 ment placed in a more enviable position in the social scale than they were ever for* 



