Another observer remarks, that the miners of Bilston are about six thousand in number, and they spend more than fifty thousand pounds annually in the purchase of ale and liquors.  Their improvidence may be studied with advantage in the Bilston Market.  No other market is supplied with finer poultry, or comparatively to the population, in greater abundance; and this is chiefly, if not entirely, for, the consumption of the labouring classes,—­for the resident inhabitants, not directly associated with those classes are few in number.  Sordid and ill-favoured men may there be seen buying on Saturday, chickens, ducks, and geese, which they eat for supper; and in some instances, bottled porter and wine.  Yet, so little have they beforehand in the world, that if the works were to stop, they would begin within a fortnight to pawn the little furniture of their cottages, and their clothes, for subsistence and for drink.

Mr. Chambers, of Edinburgh, in his description of the working classes of Sunderland makes these remarks:  “With deep sorrow I mention that everywhere one tale was told.  Intemperance prevails to a large extent; good wages are squandered on mean indulgences; there is little care for 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.”