Report on the Factory System of the United States Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 Excerpt: ...crisis of 1825-'26 was the final calamity; and thus, under reiterated strokes, tho hand-loom weavers have been pressed down, and have never, till within the last two years, had even a glimpse of improvement. During that time their wages, have risen about 10 or 15 per cent., but the weavers still remain the most depressed and degraded class of English laborers. These were the occasions and direct causes of tho lamentable fall in weavers' wages; but their effects could not have been so serious if there had not been permanent causes, belonging to tho nature of the employment itself. Of these, the first and grand cause is the easy naturo of the employment. Tho weaving of talicoes is one of the simplest of manual operations, understood in a few moments, and completely learned in a few weeks. It requires so little strength or skill that a child eight or ten years of age may practice it. A man brought up to any other employment may also very shortly learn to weave. From the facility of learning the trade, and from its being carried on under the weaver's own roof, he naturally teaches his children to weave as soon as they can tread the treadles, if he cannot obtain places for them in a factory. Thus they begin at a very early age to add to the earnings of the family, and the wife also toils in the same way to increase their scanty pittance. But it is obvious that that which is only a child's labor can be remunerated only by a child's wages. There are largo departments of hand-loom weaving which are almost entirely given up to women and children, and their wages go far to regulate all the rest. The men, where they are able, procure better kinds of work; and where they are not able, they must put up with the most paltry earnings. The second cause for the low wages of...