read that the work is to be returned at a specified hour of the day; that a weaver who cannot work by reason of illness must make the fact known at the office within three days, or sickness will not be regarded as an excuse; that it will not be regarded as a sufficient excuse if the weaver claims to have been obliged to wait for yarn; that for certain faults in the work (if, for example, more weft-threads are found within a given space than are prescribed), not less than half the wages will be deducted; and that if the goods should not be ready at the time specified, one penny will be deducted for every yard returned.  The deductions in accordance with these cards are so considerable that, for instance, a man who comes twice a week to Leigh, in Lancashire, to gather up woven goods, brings his employer at least 15 pound fines every time.  He asserts this himself, and he is regarded as one of the most lenient.  Such things were formerly settled by arbitration; but as the workers were usually dismissed if they insisted upon that, the custom has been almost wholly abandoned, and the manufacturer acts arbitrarily as prosecutor, witness, judge, law-giver, and executive in one person.  And if the workman goes to a Justice of the Peace, the answer is:  “When you accepted your card you entered upon a contract, and you must abide by it.”  The case is the same as that of the factory operatives.  Besides, the employer obliges the workman to sign a document in which he declares that he agrees to the deductions made.  And if a workman rebels, all the manufacturers in the town know at once that he is a man who, as Leach says, {197} “resists the lawful order as established by weavers’ cards, and, moreover, has the impudence to doubt the wisdom of those who are, as he ought to know, his superiors in society.”

Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them what Leach translates into plain English with the words:  “If you don’t like to be frizzled in my frying-pan, you can take a walk into the fire.”  The silk weavers of London, and especially of Spitalfields, have lived in periodic distress for a long time, and that they still have no cause to be satisfied with their lot is proved by their taking a most active part in English labour movements in general, and in London ones in particular.  The distress prevailing among them gave rise to the fever which broke out in East London, and called forth the Commission for Investigating the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Class.  But the last report of the London Fever Hospital shows that this disease is still raging.