358 ■ On employing the Poor in Parish Workhomes. 



own habitations, or for masters in the same parish or neigh- 

 bourhood. 



The conveniences and local situation of the place, and 

 the manufactures, if any, or chief employment carried on iti 

 its vicinity, will generally point out the most practicable and 

 profitable manner of employing the workhouse poor. If tor 

 the inability of the work-people we add the too frequent in- 

 attention of managers, we shall find but little encourage- 

 ment to introduce any new manufacture into a parish work- 

 house. Could any thing be thought of which is sufficiently 

 easy and profitable, it would soon be adopted by numbers, 

 ■who would be enabled to undersell the workhouse manu- 

 facture by their superior skill and energy. Nor can it be 

 reasonably expected tliat poor objects, who have not been 

 able to maintain themselves by that sort of labour which 

 they have been accustomed to, will make any considerable 

 proficiency in a new employment which requires much 

 ability or exertion. 



Wherever a considerable manufactory is established, in 

 any parish or neighbourhood, and is such as to admit any 

 part of it being carried on in a parish workhouse, it will ge- 

 nerally be found most eligible that the poor should be em- 

 ployed in the same sort of business. In such situations, 

 part of the workhouse poor are generally reduced manufac- 

 turers, who catr earn most at the business they have been 

 accustomed to, and instruct others who are not capable of 

 being more profitably employed. The best-regulated work- 

 houses I have seen near the cotton manufactories in Derby- 

 shire and Lancashire, and the woollen manufactories in 

 Yorkshire and Wiltshire, hire out as many of their poor as 

 they can to work for the master manufacturers ; and em- 

 ploy those in the house in some easy part of the same busi- 

 ness, namely, in picking and beating cotton, spinning wool, 

 breaking and spinning worsted, carding and winding yarn, Sec. 

 At Leicester, where there is a large stocking-manufactory, 

 the jwor women in the workhouses are chiefly employed in 

 spinning worsted, and the children in closing stocking- 

 seams. 



In- sea-port towns, or where the carriage from a sea-port 



is- 



