THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  SALT. 
257 
women,  boys  and  girls,  are  thus  exposed  to  more  than  all  the 
debasing  and  demoralizing  influences  which  haunt  the  worst 
dwellings  of  our  agricultural  laborers,  without  a  single  antago- 
nistic agency  to  prevent  their  lapse  into  the  lowest  depths  of 
brutish  immorality.  The  social  condition  of  the  saltworkers  has 
consequently  been,  and  probably  still  is,  more  abjectly  degraded 
than  that  of  any  other  class  equally  numerous,  although  their 
poverty  is  by  no  means  so  depressing.  With  scarcely  an  excep- 
tion, wherever  salt  manufactures  on  a  large  scale  have  existed, 
the  population  employed  in  them  has  been  the  disgrace  and  pollu- 
tion of  the  neighborhood,  a  community  almost  unapproachable  by 
philanthropy  and  irreclaimable  by  religion.  Happily  we  are 
able  to  record  the  dawn  of  better  days  in  the  district  nearest  to 
Birmingham. 
"  It  is  now  eight  years  since  the  employment  of  women  at  the 
Stoke  Works  was  entirely  discontinued  by  the  proprietor,  John 
Corbett,  Esq.,  and  although  the  full  result  of  the  measure  will 
not  be  felt  until  a  new  generation  has  arisen,  it  has  already  acted 
on  the  habits  and  condition  of  the  workpeople  in  such  a  manner 
as  to  produce  a  social  revolution  in  the  neighborhood.  Marriage, 
an  institution  previously  almost  ignored,  has,  in  a  great  measure, 
superseded  the  indiscriminate  concubinage  resulting  from  the 
former  conditions  of  labor  ;  the  dwellings  of  the  workpeople,  now 
continuously  occupied,  have  very  perceptibly  improved  ;  and  if 
the  condition  of  the  saltworker,  from  a  social  and  moral  point  of 
view,  is  still  greatly  lower  than  that  of  the  average  artisan,  it  is 
far  higher  than  it  ever  has  been,  or,  indeed,  could  be,  under  the 
old  system.  The  reformation  thus  effected  has  also  been  ma- 
terially aided  by  an  alteration  in  the  arrangement  of  the  work 
introduced  about  five  years  ago.  Formerly,  one  man  only  was 
usually  appointed  to  take  charge  of  each  pan  both  by  day  and 
night,  and  was  paid  at  the  rate  of  Is.  10  Jd.  per  ton  of  salt  manu- 
factured. In  place  of  this  system,  what  is  termed  '  shift  work  ' 
is  now  universally  adopted  at  the  Stoke  Works.  Two  men,  one 
for  the  day  and  one  for  the  night,  are  appointed  to  each  pan,  and 
receive  2s.  per  ton  proportionally  divided  between  them,  the 
higher  rate  of  payment  being  compensated  by  the  additional 
amount  manufactured  under  the  new  system.    Three  assistants 
17 
