The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-19 00:00:00

DECREASE OF SUNDAY LABOUR•

Towards its necessary preliminary above adverted
to—the raising the general standard of morals and
intelligence in the district—much has been done of
late years, and with very encouraging results. Sun-
day labour, which was formerly so common, is
greatly reduced, and in the opinion of many of the
best informed persons in the district might with a
little further effort be entirely put an end to. The
general practice in regard to the furnaces was de-
scribed to me as follows :

The practice of working the furnaces in blast on
Sundays has been gradually decreasing for the last
10 years. Now the furnace men are liberated nearly
everywhere throughout the district from 7 a.m. on
Sundays tos p.m., and the Sunday is now nearly
as quiet as in Scotland. In some places, however,
they take advantage of the Sunday morning to do
any repairing to the engine, &c., but the men get
away by dinner time.
This, where it exists, is certainly an evasion of
the professed rule. Formerly at such works those
repairs were done during a week day. Now,
although the more conspicuous work of continuing
to blow and consequently to feed the furnaces is
discontinued, the work of the repairs, which go on
without observation, is resorted to instead. It is to
be hoped that these are the last relics of a practice
which is repudiated by the better feelings that are
becoming general, and that a sense of the contradi'-
tion involved in them will lead to their abandon-
ment also.

In another part of the district a large employer
stated to me that " the Sunday here is now as quiet
as in a rural parish. In the population of 8,000 in
this immediate neighbourhood there has been an
astonishing improvement of late years. The dis-
trict is no longer like what it used to be. Drunken-
ness is greatly decreased, as shown by the police
cases. The places of worship are full on Sundays.
The habits of the people are in every respect im-
proved. The beerhouses are respectable and well
looked after."

Another gentleman informed me, "We stop our
furnaces from seven a.m. to five p.m. on Sundays,
and we find we make as much iron in the course of
the week as we did when the furnaces went all Sun-
day. Taking quantity and quality into account, we
are no losers by the change in a pecuniary point of
view, and certainly the change, which we adopted
on principle, has, we are satisfied, had an excellent
moral effect. Our men are more careful and atten-
tive during the week. We arc convinced that the
Sunday labour at the furnaces had most injurious
effects on the young especially."
It is a circumstance deserving of especial notice,
in reference to this subject, that a short daily ser-
vice having been established for the last two years
at the above works, the only men who have never
attended it are furnace men. As those men grow up
to manhood under the influence of a system which,
for them, made no distinction between the Sunday
and any other day, it is but natural that they,
should show themselves less open to religious im-
pressions than their fellow-workmen in other de-
partments who had the Sunday to themselves. The
daily service is held from 9 to 94- a.m., by the cler-
gyman of the parish, and consists of a short selec-
tion from the Prayer-book, and a brief exposition
of a text of Scripture. Two other instances of the
same kind exist in this district. When circumstances
admit of the clergyman undertaking a duty of this
kind, it must manifestly contribute greatly to the
diffusion of those higher views, and principles from
which every good may be expected, and to the
cementing the bond of union between master and
servant, the absence of which has been from time
to time, and to so great a degree, the source of
enormous injury to both.