a steady collier in my employment, with his two sons living at home,
whose monthly pay ticket has averaged £30 for the past twelvemonth.

"Another steady collier within my information, aided by his son, h as
earned during the past five months upwards of £20 a month on the
average, and from his manual labour as an ordinary collier--for it is of
the working colliers and firemen I am speaking all along--he has built
fifteen good houses, and, disregarding all menaces, he continues his
habits of steady industry, whereby he hopes to accumulate an
independence for his family in all events."]

Iron-workers are paid a still higher rate of wages. A plate-roller
easily makes three hundred a year.[2] The rollers in rail mills often
make much more. In busy times they have made as much as from seven to
ten guineas a week, or equal to from three to five hundred a year.[3]
But, like the workers in cotton mills, the iron workers are often helped
by their sons, who are also paid high wages. Thus, the under-hands are
usually boys from fourteen years of age and upwards, who earn about
nineteen shillings a week, and the helpers are boys of under fourteen,
who earn about nine shillings a week.

[Footnote 2: See Messrs. Fox, Head, and Co.'s return, in the Blue Book
above referred to. This was the rate of wages at Middlesborough, in
Yorkshire. In South Wales, the wages of the principal operatives engaged
in the iron manufacture, recently, were--Puddlers. 9_s_. a day; first
heaters on the rail mills. 8_s_. 9_d_. a day: second heaters, 11_s_.
7_d_.: roughers, 10_s_. 9_d_.: rollers, 13_s_. 2_d_., or equal to that
amount.]

[Footnote 3: Even at the present time, when business is so much