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 depressed, the mill-rollers make an average wage of L5 10_s_. a week.]

These earnings are far above the average incomes of the professional classes.  The rail rollers are able to earn a rate of pay equal to that of Lieutenant-Colonels in Her Majesty’s Foot Guards; plate-rollers equal to that of Majors of Foot; and roughers equal to that of Lieutenants and Adjutants.

Goldsmith spoke of the country curate as “passing rich with forty pounds a year.”  The incomes of curates have certainly increased since the time when Goldsmith wrote, but nothing like the incomes of skilled and unskilled workmen.  If curates merely worked for money, they would certainly change their vocation, and become colliers and iron-workers.

When the author visited Renfrewshire a few years ago, the colliers were earning from ten to fourteen shillings a day.  According to the common saying, they were “making money like a minting machine.”  To take an instance, a father and three sons were earning sixty pounds a month,—­or equal to a united income of more than seven hundred pounds a year.  The father was a sober, steady, “eident” man.  While the high wages lasted, he was the first to enter the pit in the morning, and the last to leave it at night.  He only lost five days in one year (1873-4),—­the loss being occasioned by fast-days and holidays.  Believing that the period of high wages could not last long, he and his sons worked as hard as they could.  They saved a good deal of money, and bought several houses; besides educating themselves to occupy higher positions.

In the same neighbourhood, another collier, with four sons, was earning money at about the same rate per man, that is about seventy-five-pounds a mouth, or nine hundred pounds a year.  This family bought five houses within a year, and saved a considerable sum besides.  The last information we had respecting them was that the father had become a contractor,—­that he employed about sixty colliers and “reddsmen,"[1] and was allowed so much for every ton of coals brought to bank.  The sons were looking after their father’s interests.  They were all sober, diligent, sensible men; and took a great deal of interest in the education and improvement of the people in their neighbourhood.