increasing: as there is more money, and more time to spend it in,
sobriety is not on the increase, especially amongst females."

The operatives employed in the woollen manufacture receive about forty
shillings a week, and some as much as sixty,[1] besides the amount
earned by their children.

A good mechanic in an engine shop makes from thirty-five to forty-five
shillings a week, and some mechanics make much larger wages. Multiply
these figures, and it will be found that they amount to an annual income
of from a hundred to a hundred and twenty pounds a year.

[Footnote 1: See the above Blue Book, p. 57, certifying the wages paid
by Bliss and Son, of Chipping Norton Woollen Factory.]

But the colliers and iron-workers are paid much higher wages. One of the
largest iron-masters recently published in the newspapers the names of
certain colliers in his employment who were receiving from four to five
pounds a week,--or equal to an annual income of from two hundred to two
hundred and fifty pounds a year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Richard Fothergill, Esq., M.P. He published a subsequent
letter, from which we extract the following:--

"No doubt such earnings seem large to clerks, and educated men, who
after receiving a costly education have often to struggle hard for
bread; but they are nevertheless the rightful earnings of steady manual
labour; and I have the pleasure of adding that, while all steady,
well-disposed colliers, in good health, could make equally good wages,
many hundreds in South Wales are quietly doing as much or more: witness