The workman in good employment is not liable to losses by bad debts; he has no obsolete machinery from time to time left useless on his hands; and he has no anxiety about finding a market for his goods, nor fears respecting fluctuations in the price of the raw material. These are important advantages in his favour, which he does not usually take into account. It is true he suffers if trade is bad, but he earns high wages if it be good: he can then save money if he chooses to do so. He may be said to participate in the adversity or prosperity of his firm, but without incurring any of the liabilities of partnership.
Mr. Carlyle has given a curious account of the great English manufacturer. "Plugson, of St. Dolly Undershot, buccaneer-like, says to his men, 'Noble spinners, this is the hundred thousand we have gained, wherein I mean to dwell and plant my vineyards. The hundred thousand is mine, the three-and-sixpence daily was yours. Adieu, noble spinners! drink my health with this groat each, which I give you over and above!'"
This account of the manufacturing buccaneer is a picture drawn by a man of genius from his imagination. There are probably many readers who believe the picture to be drawn from fact. There may, of course, be masters who are buccaneers; but there are also masters who are not buccaneers. There are dishonest manufacturers, as there are dishonest literary men, dishonest publicans, dishonest tradesmen. But we must believe that in all occupations honesty is the rule, and dishonesty the exception. At all events, it is better that we should know what the manufacturers really are,—from fact rather than from fiction.
Let us first take a large manufacturing firm, or rather series of firms, well known in South Lancashire. We mean the cotton-spinning mills of the Messrs. Ashworth at Egerton and New Eagley. They have been in existence for more than seventy years. They have been repeatedly enlarged, and increasing numbers of workpeople have been employed at the uniform wages paid throughout the district. Workmen earn from seventeen shillings to two pounds a week. Women-weavers can earn as much as twenty-one shillings a week. Where the parents have children, the united earnings of families amount to as much as from £150 to £200 a year.
Then, as to what the Ashworths have done for the benefit of their workpeople. Schooling, by means of mutual instruction classes, was in operation from the first; but about the year 1825, when the works were greatly enlarged, and the population was considerably increased, a day school was opened for children, which was used as an evening school for young men, as well as for a Sunday-school. The continued extension of the works led to an enlargement of the school accommodation; and while this was being provided, arrangements were made for a news-room, library, and for the performance of divine worship on Sundays. A cricket-ground was also provided for the use of young people.
Misgivings were not unfrequently expressed that the zeal and expenditure incurred by the Messrs. Ashworth might one day be turned against them, to their annoyance and pecuniary loss. The prediction was realized in only a single instance. A young man of considerable talent, who when a child had been removed to the factory from a neighbouring workhouse, made very rapid progress at school, especially in arithmetic; and when a strike of the workpeople occurred in 1830, one of the great strike years, he became very officious as a leader. The strike was defeated by the employment of new hands, and it was attributed to the influence of this young man that the employed were brutally assailed by an infuriated mob, and that the windows of the schoolroom were smashed, and other works of destruction committed.
The employers, nevertheless, pursued their original design. They repaired the school-house, and endeavoured to increase the efficacy of the teaching. They believed that nothing was better calculated to remove ignorant infatuation than increased schooling. In a great many instances, the heads of the families had previously been engaged as hand-loom weavers, or in some pastoral pursuit; and it became evident that in course of time the exercise of their minds in the details of a new pursuit awakened their intelligence, and their general demeanour indicated marks of a higher cultivation.
The New Eagley Mills being situated in a narrow valley, several miles from Bolton, and the property being in the possession of the owners, they forbade the opening of any tavern or beerhouse on the estate; so that the district became distinguished for the order and sobriety of the inhabitants. A man of intemperate habits has little chance of remaining in the Ashworth villages. He is expelled, not by the employers, but by the men themselves. He must conform to the sober habits of the place, or decamp to some larger town, where his vices may be hidden in the crowd. Many of the parents have expressed how much gratification they have felt, that by reason of the isolated situation they enjoyed as a community, they had become so completely separated from the corrupt influences of music saloons and drink-shops.
The masters have added to their other obligations to the workpeople, the erection of comfortable cottages for their accommodation. They are built of stone, and are two-storied; some have two upper bedrooms, and others have three. On the ground floor there is a sitting-room, a living-room, and a scullery, with a walled courtyard enclosing the whole premises. The proprietor pays the poor-rates and other local charges, and the rentals of the houses vary from 2_s_. 4_d_. to 4_s_. 3_d_. a week.
The regularity of their employment, accompanied with the payment of wages on Friday night, doubtless promoted their local attachment to the place. Many of the descendants of the first comers remain on the spot; their social relations have been promoted; intermarriages have been frequent; and during the whole period there has not been a single prosecution for theft. The working people have also thriven as well as their masters. Great numbers of them are known to possess reserved funds in savings banks and other depositories for savings; and there are others of them who have invested their money in cottage buildings, and in various other ways.