who have worked in this way as being too weak.
The condition of these children is characterised
as “a disgrace to a Christian country,”
and the wish expressed for legislative interference.
The Factory Report {189} adds that the stocking weavers
are the worst paid workers in Leicester, earning six,
or with great effort, seven shillings a week, for
sixteen to eighteen hours’ daily work.
Formerly they earned twenty to twenty-one shillings,
but the introduction of enlarged frames has ruined
their business; the great majority still work with
old, small, single frames, and compete with difficulty
with the progress of machinery. Here, too, every
progress is a disadvantage for the workers.
Nevertheless, Commissioner Power speaks of the pride
of the stocking weavers that they are free, and had
no factory bell to measure out the time for their
eating, sleeping, and working. Their position
to-day is no better than in 1833, when the Factory
Commission made the foregoing statements, the competition
of the Saxon stocking weavers, who have scarcely anything
to eat, takes care of that. This competition
is too strong for the English in nearly all foreign
markets, and for the lower qualities of goods even
in the English market. It must be a source of
rejoicing for the patriotic German stocking weaver
that his starvation wages force his English brother
to starve too! And, verily, will he not starve
on, proud and happy, for the greater glory of German
industry, since the honour of the Fatherland demands
that his table should be bare, his dish half empty?
Ah! it is a noble thing this competition, this “race
of the nations.” In the Morning Chronicle,
another Liberal sheet, the organ of the bourgeoisie
par excellence, there were published some letters
from a stocking weaver in Hinckley, describing the
condition of his fellow-workers. Among other
things, he reports 50 families, 321 persons, who were
supported by 109 frames; each frame yielded on an
average 5.5 shillings; each family earned an average
of 11s. 4d. weekly. Out of this there was required
for house rent, frame rent, fuel, light, soap, and
needles, together 5s. 10d., so that there remained
for food, per head daily, 1.5d., and for clothing
nothing. “No eye,” says the stocking
weaver, “has seen, no ear heard, and no heart
felt the half of the sufferings that these poor people
endure.” Beds were wanting either wholly
or in part, the children ran about ragged and barefoot;
the men said, with tears in their eyes: “It’s
a long time since we had any meat; we have almost
forgotten how it tastes;” and, finally, some
of them worked on Sunday, though public opinion pardons
anything else more readily than this, and the rattling
noise of the frame is audible throughout the neighbourhood.
“But,” said one of them, “look at
my children and ask no questions. My poverty
forces me to it; I can’t and won’t hear
my children forever crying for bread, without trying
the last means of winning it honestly. Last