[Footnote 1:  A return of seven families employed by Henry Ashworth, New Cayley Mills, Lancashire, is given in the Blue Book, entitled, “Report of the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867, containing the Returns relative to the New Order of Reward,” p. 163.  Of the seven families, the lowest earnings per family amounted to L2 14s. 6d.; and the highest to L3 19s. a week.]

An employer at Blackburn informs us that many persons earn upwards of five pounds a week,—­or equal to an average income of two hundred and sixty pounds a year.  Such families, he says, “ought not to expend more than three pounds weekly.  The rest should be saved.  But most of them, after feeding and clothing themselves, spend the rest in drink and dissipation.”

The wages are similar in the Burnley district, where food, drink, and dress absorb the greater part of the workpeople’s earnings.  In this, as in other factory districts, “the practice of young persons (mill-workers) boarding with their parents is prevalent, and is very detrimental to parental authority.”  Another reporter says, “Wages are 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 a steady collier in my employment, with his two sons living at home, whose monthly pay ticket has averaged L30 for the past twelvemonth.

“Another steady collier within my information, aided by his son, h as earned during the past five months upwards of L20 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.”]