or fourteen days for a warp; but if they take the 20s. and the goods, then there is always a warp ready for them.  And that is Free Trade.  Lord Brougham said we ought to put by something in our young days, so that we need not go to the parish when we are old.  Well, are we to put by the rotten goods?  If this did not come from a lord, one would say his brains were as rotten as the goods that our work is paid in.  When the unstamped papers came out “illegally,” there was a lot of them to report it to the police in Holmfirth, the Blythes, the Edwards, etc.; but where are they now?  But this is different.  Our truck manufacturer belongs to the pious Free Trade lot; he goes to church twice every Sunday, and repeats devotedly after the parson:  ’We have left undone the things we ought to have done, and we have done the things we ought not to have done, and there is no good in us; but, good Lord, deliver us.’  Yes, deliver us till to-morrow, and we will pay our weavers again in rotten goods.”

The Cottage system looks much more innocent and arose in a much more harmless way, though it has the same enslaving influence upon the employee.  In the neighbourhood of the mills in the country, there is often a lack of dwelling accommodation for the operatives.  The manufacturer is frequently obliged to build such dwellings and does so gladly, as they yield great advantages, besides the interest upon the capital invested.  If any owner of working-men’s dwellings averages about six per cent. on his invested capital, it is safe to calculate that the manufacturer’s cottages yield twice this rate; for so long as his factory does not stand perfectly idle he is sure of occupants, and of occupants who pay punctually.  He is therefore spared the two chief disadvantages under which other house-owners labour; his cottages never stand empty, and he runs no risk.  But the rent of the cottages is as high as though these disadvantages were in full force, and by obtaining the same rent as the ordinary house-owner, the manufacturer, at cost of the operatives, makes a brilliant investment at twelve to fourteen per cent.  For it is clearly unjust that he should make twice as much profit as other competing house-owners, who at the same time are excluded from competing with him.  But it implies a double wrong, when he draws his fixed profit from the pockets of the non-possessing class, which must consider the expenditure of every penny.  He is used to that, however, he whose whole wealth is gained at the cost of his employees.  But this injustice becomes an infamy when the manufacturer, as often happens, forces his operatives, who must occupy his houses on pain of dismissal, to pay a higher rent than the ordinary one, or even to pay rent for houses in which they do not live!  The Halifax Guardian, quoted by the Liberal Sun, asserts that hundreds of operatives in Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham, and Rochdale, etc., are forced by their employers