the morrow, and the workhouse is the ultimate refuge. One man, a skilled
worker in an iron-foundry, was pointed out as having for years received
a wage of one guinea a day, or six guineas a week; he had spent all,
mostly in drink, and was now reduced to a lower department at a pound a
week."

Another illustration occurs. A clerk at Blackburn took a house for
twenty pounds a year, and sublet the cellars underneath to a factory
operative at a rental of five pounds a year. The clerk had a wife, four
children, and a servant; the operative had a wife and five children. The
clerk and his family were well dressed, their children went to school,
and all went to church on Sundays. The operative's family went, some to
the factory, others to the gutter, but none to school; they were
ill-dressed, excepting on Sundays, when they obtained their clothes from
the pawnshop. As the Saturdays came round, the frying-pan in the cellar
was almost constantly at work until Monday night; and as regularly as
Thursday arrived, the bundle of clothes was sent to the pawnshop. Yet
the income of the upper-class family in the higher part of the house was
a hundred a year; and the income of the lower class family in the cellar
was fifty pounds more--that is, a hundred and fifty pounds a year!

An employer in the same neighbourhood used to say, "I cannot afford
lamb, salmon, young ducks and green peas, new potatoes, strawberries and
such-like, until after my hands have been consuming these delicacies of
the season for some three or four weeks."

The intense selfishness, thriftlessness, and folly of these highly paid
operatives, is scarcely credible. Exceptions are frequently taken to
calling the working classes "the lower orders;" but "the lower orders"
they always will be, so long as they indicate such sensual indulgence