The Express.
London, England, 1846-11-03 00:00:00

A WALK AMONGST. THE WORKERS OF
so.Hearifivneg .millateselyovheardto
athvislryplacaeg,
ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE.
recanadblaie walk of
f
the incidents of my journey were, in my opinion, such
as would be interesting to the readers of the Daily
News, or, indeed, to any readers who feel concerned in the
actual position of their fellow-subjects, and especially that of
the great bulk of the working classes, I make no apology for
transmitting a few notes for publication in your useful Jour-
nal. It were entirely. useless to attempt judging of the
condition of a community by any other test than the condi-
tion of the labouring portion of it. Railways may be in
progress • buildings may be erected ; wealth and splendour
may be displayed by the great and rich of the land ;—but. if
there be not a correspondent substantiality and well-doing
in the cottage of the labourer, that community is
drooping at the core ; and as surely as ever in-
ward decay brought down a splendid oak, so surely
will the wealth and outward proeperity of that com-
munity—the evil not being removed, the wrong not being
righted—perish, and become undone. The result of a con-
trary state of things needs not be described; even statesmen
base become aware of the perfect truth of the test I would
endeavour to apply to my limited observations; and happy
ani fin having to state that the better view predoma.i.ates in
this my first pedestrian survey of 1846.
I shall not attempt to middle with the statistics of the
place, the number of its population, of its dwellings, its
manufactories, or such things, for which practical readers
may consult the returns of the last census. History will
describe the modern tows and nearly the whole of ;he neigh-
bourhood —Hyde, Dukinfield, and Staleybridge—as spring-
ing up contemporaneously with the advance of the cotton
trade. There have been many stubborn turn-outs
here, some of them leading to fatal results. Poli-
tical agitation has also been a favourite excitement with
the people ; and though a radical ?crankier touched a little
by. • evangelism," one of the order of employers also, has
twice secured his scat against open foes and covert enemies,
the dogmas of Messrs. O'Connor, Oastler, and Stephens have
had great weight with the multitude. These things arc,
however, almost laid aside ; or if there be any feeling tending
that was, it is not such as it used to be, too strong for con-
trol. Seldom any ebullition appears of sufficient consequence
to attract public notice. Mr. Stephens is now living here
iu a very quiet way. Ile preaches to his congregation at his
own chapel; farms a little homestead near the town; and has
lately been sworn in a peace officer. Oastler, we all know,
has wisely taken up business and dropped bother ; and the
sooner the third of the party does the same the better for
himself, and no worse for any one.
My road lay by young woodlands : through a series of
fields, meadows, and lanes, darkened by hazel, rowen,
and wild rose. At intervals were neat cottages, inhabited
by hand-loom weavers, nearly all of them in the silk line,
and apparently " well to do in the world." All through
wood-houses and water-houses, the same indications of a con-
tented sufficiency were perceivable. One may note these
things from the appearance of the dwellings : their windows
in good repair; their cleanly door-ways ; their teimgardens,
with flowers at the front, and fruit-trees behind; the
whitened linen, well darned and laid out to bleach on the
hedges or field-swards; end, perhaps most of all. by the
well-clothed, cleanly, and plump-checked little imps that
une meets going to school, or sees playing on their thresholds.
At Taunton, a small village about a toile on this side of Ash-
ton, my conclusions were more Strongly verified. The
houses are nearly all new ; very few of them seem to have
been built more than twenty years. They stand on a kind
of level eminence, with deep woods and streams on the
north; and fields, meads, and a wide cultivated mese towards
the south ; the town cf Ashton also obtrudes on the view.
Here are very clean-looking houses, and convenient work-
shops, in good repair ; there are plenty of gardens around,
all cultivated; good water, and a fine sweep of air, which,
for the most part, carries the smoke of the town away
hence and over to the hills of Derbyshire. The fabrics
manufactured here are plush and velvet ; the weavers have
had these branches in their hands during many years ; they
form a regular club, and subscribe weekly, and by well
directed management, whether of resistance or concession,
they have kept both their employment and their wages
more steady than have other branches of the silk manufac-
ture. A man without haste or working long hours, will
earn his guinea a week ; and a woman who can stick by her
loom, having but few household duties to perform, will earn
her fourteen to sixteen shillings a week. This is the sort ca
work women ought to have, if society were in the state one
could wish it to be. They should all work at home ; and
when one beholds a female neatly drew(' and seated at her
loom, in one of these nice, dean, well-ventilated loom shops,
labouring attentively but deliberately, without fatigue or
exhaustion, and with the certainty of a recompense, one can
but think mournfully of your milliners at London, swooning
On the carpets; or of the still more pitiable beings, who

" Sew at once with a double thread
A shroud as well as a shirt."
I, however, at one shop which I went to, found a weaver
who was rather under the shirt-making line. Ile was an
aged man, and was weaving cotton shawls about a yard in
width, and a yard in length each, fur which he got eighteen
pence a dozen or, three halfpence each, and his stint of
work was about a dozen a day.
At one of the factories I was ushered into a room where
about seventy persons--for there were both men and women
—were tending 143 power looms. The noise, on entering
one of these large work rooms, is deafening; and the
spectacle is calculated to excites trange ideas and aIIII4OIOIIS.
You look up the room, and behold all these human beings—
their faces towards you—new bent down—new risen up—
now looking on this side—now on that—now stopping a
lathe—now setting it in motion—now piecing a thread
—now tilling a shuttle—and away again swings the
almost living looking thing which stands before them,
and which they seem to he hinuouring and con-
trolling as they would a strong willed child. These
looms—and it is difficult to describe the ideas which
rush across one's mind at first sight of them—seem to be so
many living beings, becursed with infernal energy, who are
never to know repose; beings doomed to an eternal strife;
no breathing-time, no panting, no rest; for the mass
being always in motion, the stoppage of a single loom
makes no if'ff.treuce in the general effect. On they go,
with the great noise, and the tremulous shake also,
of a distant waterfall. A dust from the dressing of the
warps is always settling on the heads and shoulders of
the workers; and this is one of the greatest drawbacks attend-
ing the employment, atilt constantly vitiates, and makes
still closer, and less fit fur respiration, that air, which the
number of human beings, the artificial heat of the place, and
the motion of the machinery, have already deteriorated.
Many of the women appeared to be married—the remainder
were girls; and I thought they seemed to he crowded
t to much together. Fame also I thought seemed as if they
would willingly sit down if they had time. Hut no ;
the ever moving, moaning, howling, insatiate machinery
does not permit it. The females were all cleanly and decently
attired ; some of the young women were smartly dressed;
and the men had Hung oft' their jarkets and waistcoats, and
worked with their shirt sleeves and their collars thrown

open.
At one or two other mills, the workers were much the
same. At others they were better ; and at one whin h I
entered I found about ninety females at work in one room.
With a few exceptions, they were young women ; and fur
dress, goad looks, and healthy appearance, I never saw at
any one view a number of females who surpassed them. I
was surprised! The place was light, airy, and almost free
from dust; and it was gratifying to meet with a demonstra-
tion that factory labour could be so far ameliorated by judi-
cious attention on the part of the employer. The carding-
rooms were more warm ; and there, there was more dust, as
there must necessarily be. The girls, I thought, were more
pale. The spinners and piccera were working in their
shirts and trowsers only. The place also was warm, and
the boys seemed to be more affected by confinement than
by labour. In some parts of the outskirts of the
town were excellent dwellings for the operatives.
Some had handsome gardens before the doors • and others,
notwithstanding the potato panic, had potato Plots, with the
vegetable growing in an apparently healthy condition. Nor,
as I was happy to learn, were the mental and moral wants of
the children unattended to: instruction was supplied to ouch
as chose to accept it. and in one part a new school was in the
course of erettion, calculated to accommodate a thousand
scholars.
And now for an operative of another description—a poet,
whom I found working at hie trade of a reed-maker. Your
readers may perhaps ask, incredulously, " Is he a poet I"
Let them judge for themselves. A stanza of a poem he has
recently produced will perhaps be deemed a sunicient reply.
Thes the old idols crumble to the dust,
Their altars shattered and thcirglory ithorn;
Old sophistries once taken upon trust
As wisdom's spirit-words, arc grown outworn;
Another incubi., though newly-horn,
Dies of its own unholiness ; a ery
Of simultaneous triumph mixed with acorn,
Comes from the toil-bowed multitudes:—Ah why!
Do soul-sent sounds like these ascend the placid. sky'.
Farewell then lawless law, thou death-in-life,
Thou labour-lowering bread-curse, and thou bane
Of God's blest bounty! thou remorseless knife
Held at the throat of enterprise! thou stain
Of feeedom's fairest page! thou gainless gain!
Thou night-mare of the nation! We awake
And fling thee off ; thy manifold.] chain
Consumeth like the lightning-kindled brake;
The far off shores clap hands, and all thy champions quake!"
Such is a specimen of the poetry of John Critchly Prince,
one of the many superior minds who are an ornament to the
class of Lancashire operatives, amongst whom and with
whom he is content to earn an independent livelihood by the
aptness of his skill and the sweat of his brow.
X. L. M.

THE LANDOWNERS NOT ETINED YET.—A sale of land,
comprising about twenty-six acres, took place at Aston-on-
Trent, last week. The various lots of land realised
the following prices :-2 acres, 2 roods, 15 poles, sold at 921.
per acre ; 4 A., 3 E., 6 r. at 100/. do. ; 2 A., 2 R., 13 r. at
1231. do. ; 2 A., 2 a., 24 P. at 1471. do. ; 2 A., 2 a., 37 r. at
1671. do. ; 7 A., 3 a., 31 r. at 1911. do. ; 3 A., 23 P. at 2221.
The whole of the land (which realised near 40001.) is in the
occupation of Mr. Neap, formerly of Leen Side, in this town,
who holds it on lease, and consequently this enormous price
has not been given for the land with any intention of con-
verting it to other uses.
THE FISHERMEN OF Sr. Ives have been fortunate of
late in securing the most extraordinary " catch " of pilchards
that was perhaps ever known. The calculation is that
30,000 hogsheads were inclosed by 18 seams or nets ; but so
great was the pressure, so little " elbow-room," that the fish
died by millions. However, 20,000 hogsheads will be se-
cured, yielding a net profit of 20s. to 30s. per hogshead, and
distributing in wages in the district perhaps as much more
The fish are retailing at 4d. per 120.
ABOUT FORTY SAIL OF SMALL lIERHING-BOATS have
been fishing off Brighton during the week, and have lakca
from 100 to 500 fish nightly, which have sold at from 6e.. to
7s. per 100.—The fishery at the North Foreland has been
much impeded by the late gales, in which one Hastings boat
was lost with all her crew. Several of the Brighton boats
were missing for some time; but they have been 6:IICC all
heard of. But few fish have been taken.