A. Wages in the Cotton Industry.

The Wages paid in the Cotton Industry are particularly valuable indications of the rates in other trades, both because for the last forty years that industry has maintained the same position of importance, and because it has also, during that time, been singularly free from any disturbing fluctuation in the number of hands employed.^* This is mainly owing to the gradual introduction of

^* The number of hands employed in all branches of the Cotton Trade is given at 420,000 for 1874, and in 1840 it was estimated at 400,000.

page 34 machinery, by which, in spite of the great increase in the production of Cotton Goods, the necessity for employing more labour has been avoided.

In examining the fluctuations, it is convenient to adopt a rough division of the Cotton operatives into four classes, according to the degree of skill required in their several occupations.

In the first class would come the overlookers and superior artisans in each department, together with those spinners who, according to the number of spindles each man can manage, would be classed above No. 100 in the technical language of the factory. The bulk of the adult males would fall into the second class, as being spinners and weavers of average skill. Women should be ranked alone as a third class; and, for greater clearness, the Wages of children under 16 should also be considered separately.

The subjoined Tables are an attempt to carry out this principle of division.

Table showing the fluctuations in the average rate of Weekly Wages paid to persons employed in the Cotton Trade during the year 1839-77 in Manchester and the neighbourhood:—

It appears from these Tables that in the year 1839 the Wages of the highest paid Overlooker, in any Department, was 25s. for a week of 69 hours, which is twelve hours a day, with nine hours on Saturday for a half holiday. Ten years later—after Free Trade—his Wages had risen to 28s., and his hours of work had been reduced to 60 in the week. Since that date there has been a steady improvement in Wages, together with a further reduction in the hours of work. The lowest paid Overlooker now gets more for 56½ hours work than the best paid Overlooker received in 1849 for 60 hours, while the remuneration of the more skilled Overlookers has increased more than 50 per cent, in the same period. The increase in the Wages of the Engineers is even more remarkable. They have more than doubled in the last thirty years. The skilled spinners—after a temporary fall through the introduction of machinery—are also better off than they were. Those who are the least skilled among them are paid higher for less work, and the rewards open to them for a higher exercise of skill are considerably increased. Even the class of Unskilled Labourers, whose progress, as already noted in the text,^* is generally slower, have, in some cases, doubled their Wages in the same thirty years; although, with reference to this Class, it should not be forgotten, that many of its members are constantly pushing forward into better paid employments, and that it is also being constantly recruited from below by those, who, in former days, would have lived as paupers or vagabonds.

The figures which show the Wages paid to Women need no further explanation. They will show, with sufficient clearness, how low is the market value of woman's labour, and how little has been done to raise that value by intelligent and powerful combination. Unlike men, women are not yet paid by reference to any standard of class comfort, but are content with any pittance, which may increase the family resources, however insufficient that may be, by itself, to keep one person in a position of health and decency. By such ill-judged economy, they only depress the general labour market, without obtaining for themselves independence or security; so that they tempt men, who are heedless of the impossibility of bringing women back to a state of subjection, to clamour for their exclusion from male employments.

Table of Weekly Wages paid in the Woollen Trade at Leeds and Huddersfield. The figures from 1855 to 1861 are of the Wages paid at Leeds, those from 1866 to 1879 those paid at Huddersfield.

Table of Weekly Wages paid at Bradford in the Worsted Manufacture.

Table of Weekly Wages paid in the Iron Trade of Sheffield.