misery, and want caused by intemperance. Our commercial prosperity will feed this frightful source of degradation so long as the evil is not combated by a system of obligatory national education, elevating the intelligence and the moral and religious principles of those classes who are now the victims of intemperance. Meanwhile 70,000 of the manual labour classes have enrolled themselves members of the United Kingdom Alliance. They have created an active propagandismassembling meetings characterised by the most enthusiastic outbursts of feeling. They establish local societies in almost every town or large village, circulate periodicals, and enrol members; they found benefit societies, bands of hope for children, employ missionaries and teachers, and have established about twenty county unions.'

During the sittings of the different Sections, the liquor traffic question received much incidental attention, in addition to the more special notice given to it as recorded above. For example: a paper was read by Mr. Airlie, from the Glasgow Abstainers' Union, on Recreative Amusements; the Rev. H. Solly read a paper on Working Men's Clubs;

and Dr. Martin, of Warrington, read a paper on the Cause of the High Rate of Mortality in Liverpool; in all which papers, and especially in the last, there was distinct tracing of the drink traffic as the great cause placing obstacles in the way of improvement. In the Health Section there was repeated reference to drinking and drunkenness as causes of bad nursing and other evils. In the supplementary Section of Economy and Trade, a paper on Servants' Clubs, by Mrs. Rainds, was very pointed in its denunciation of public-houses and beershops. On Monday night, the Civil Court was crowded, for a discussion of the subject of bribery at elections. One of the papers read, prepared by Mr. J. Noble, recommended the prohibition of public-houses as committee rooms and places for electoral purposes, and the closing of all public-houses on the days of nomination and polling, as practised at the last election of President for the United States. These recommendations were loudly cheered; and they were endorsed by Mr. Freeland, ex-M.P. for Chichester, and other gentlemen who took part in the debate.

Again, in a paper by Mr. A. Ransome, on the Health of Manchester and Salford, read on Saturday in the Health Section,

the writer said:- Intemperance has often been noticed as a cause of disease, and it is difficult to over-estimate its gravity. According to tables carefully drawn up by Mr. Neison from copious data, the rate of mortality amongst persons of intemperate habits is shown to be "frightfully high," and unequalled by the results of any other series of observations made on any class of the population of this country. At the term of life from twenty-one to thirty the mortality is upwards of five times that of the general community, and the effects of the different kinds of drink are thus shown:-The rate of mortality amongst beer drinkers is 44.97 per 1,000 yearly; spirit drinkers, 59.96; mixed beer and spirit, 61.94. "Truly," he says, "if there be anything in the usages of society calculated to destroy life, the most powerful is certainly the inordinate use of strong drink." It has often been said that in any place the more numerous the facilities for drinking the greater the amount of drunkenness, and, we may now surely add, the larger will be the rate of mortality. In Liverpool the excessive mortality is by many observers attributed largely to drunkenness; and the mortality sub-committee of the Board of Health recommends that some control over the sale of intoxicating liquors should be given to the authorities.'

On one of the mornings during the progress of the Congress, a large and distinguished company accepted the invitation of the United Kingdom Alliance Executive, to breakfast in the Trevelyan Hotel, Manchester. The venerable chairman of the Executive of the Alliance, Mr. Alderman Harvey, J.P., presided; and addresses were delivered by Mr. B. Whitworth, M.P.; Mr. Rawlinson, C.B.; Dr. Hancock, of Dublin; Mr. Thomas Beggs, of London; Rev. W. N. Molesworth, of Rochdale; Mr. J. H. Raper; Rev. Dr. Emerton; Mr. Gilbert, of London, and the Hon. Neal Dow. The journal from which we have already quoted gave the following notice of the breakfast:- Yesterday we began the day with a breakfast which the United Kingdom Alliance very hospitably gave to the sociologists in the Trevelyan (Temperance) Hotel. There was some very good speaking-short, pithy, and to the point. Alderman Harvey, of Salford, an ardent friend of the Alliance, presided, and he called up in succession a number of gentlemen of whom some are well known outside the ranks of the

temperance

and the change arises from a difference in the manners and customs, not of that class, but of the class above it.

In former days it was the custom for a farmer to sit in his kitchen in the evening when work was over, with his wife and family, his farm servants and servant maids. They all supped together and spent the evening together; thus the farmer and his wife acted as protectors and chaperons' to the young girls, and all was well. But now the custom is changed; the farmer sits in the parlour with his family, and the servant girls spend the evening alone with the farm lads. In the very large farm-houses this does not usually occur; there the farming men lodge with the foreman, whose wife cooks for them, and they all sup and spend the evening together; but in ordinary farm-houses the new custom is productive of much harm. There is, therefore, no cause for surprise if parents who can afford to apprentice their daughters to the dressmaking trade should prefer to do so, rather than expose them to the very great disagreeableness of spending the evening alone with rough lads, whose manners and language are by no means what they ought to be.

If gentlefolks would take the daughters of cow cottagers and superior workmen into their houses at once, without any previous training, their parents would probably be glad to send them, but they do not like to expose them to the rough ordeal of farm life, and we ought not to blame them for this feeling, for it is indeed commendable.

The author of Ploughing and Sowing "* says on this subject:

'Every farm-house that I go into, I hear the same story. The master and mistress (strange misnomers!) have no control whatever over their servants, except in their actual work: this is abundantly evident; but where does the fault lie? Surely with us all; not only with the employers themselves, but with the so-called Christian people who live round about, and make no effort, or not all that they might do, to remedy this state of things; but in the first instance, I think, the blame rests most with the farmers and their wives, in having that number of young servants in their house, and not living amongst them; quite forgetting that in every gentleman's

Ploughing and Sowing. Edited by the Rev. F. Digby Legard.

Vol. 9.-No. 36.

house, where there is anything like that number of young servants, there are upper servants, male and female, whose first duty it is to keep order in the household, whereas in a farm-house, the foreman, who is the only person even supposed to have any authority in the kitchen, is very frequently under twenty, and seldom more than twenty-three.

'Seeing is believing. I had heard all my life, with the hearing of the ear, that farm-house life was "so demoralising." I had also heard pretty much what were its evils and dangers, but till I saw it with my own eyes last Thursday evening, at seven o'clock, I never really believed it; not that I doubted it, but I never believed it in any true sense, till I saw it. This was how it happened :I went into a farm-house parlour, and stayed for a few minutes talking with its inmates; then down a passage to the farm-house kitchen, to talk to its inmates, consisting of seven young men and youths, and three young women, who had all just finished supper; the girls were "washing up," the lads were sitting on benches about the kitchen or near the fire; there was no housekeeper, no older person with them: that is just what I saw, and just what takes place every evening of their lives, except that my coming amongst them on this occasion made a little difference, perhaps even a great difference, and something of a sensation.'

In another book by the same author there is the following passage:

I am afraid, however, that if the generality of farmers and their wives cannot be considered guiltless concerning the boys that they employ, still less can they as regards their servant girls. If they are bound in some degree to supply the place of parents to the boys they hire, they are certainly not less so as regards the girls, who are exposed to especial dangers and trials. When they fall, who shall apportion the blame aright between their parents, their employers, and themselves? One thing is plain that in the higher classes of life, watchful care from very early years, refinement of manners, and regard for public opinion, are hardly considered sufficient safeguards to make it desirable to leave youths and maidens constantly in one another's society, without some kind of chaperonage; how must it be,

*More About Farm Lads.'

then

then, with those poor girls who have not had those advantages of early association and training, and are too often exposed to very much that is unseemly, without any protection of older friend or guardian; for the mistress is never in the kitchen in the evening, and the foreman, who is supposed to keep order, is often a youth of twenty. I have known ten farm lads and three girls in a house, with a foreman of twenty, and a wild youth he was! Perhaps more generally the foreman is twenty-two or twentythree. If he is older and married, he does not live in the house, but goes home when he has had his supper, leaving perhaps six or eight young men and lads, and either two or three girls, to their own devices.'t

In small farms, where there is only one girl and one or two lads, the state of affairs is no better. The wife of a clergyman, writing from another county, says in a letter about a girl who is going to service, I shall dread her going to a small farm-house, so many girls are ruined; they are allowed to mix so much with the farming lads.'

I have been told by a working woman, on whose word I can rely, that if a servant girl complains to her mistress of insolent conduct on the part of the lads, the answer not unfrequently is,

+ This describes farm life in Yorkshire. In other counties it is, I believe, usual, when the farms are so large as to require six or eight farming men, to send them to lodge with the foreman.

'If you do not like your place you can leave; and the young man is not even reproved for his conduct, which the girl must either submit to, or lose her place. The fact is, that it is much easier to get a new maid than a new farm lad-the number of girls anxious to get training being so great-and if the lad was offended he would want to leave; and, though he has no legal right to do so till the end of the year, a farmer does not like to keep a lad against his will.

66

'If a master endeavours to find fault about anything, a lad's reply will be, If I don't please you, give me my money." This generally happens at a time of year when there is much to be done in the fields, and a great demand for labour. Will it be believed that in the great majority of cases a master dares not refuse? I have often argued the matter with farmers, and have tried to show them that if thus bullied, they were the servants and their lads the masters. "It's all very true what you say," they replied, "but you see there are so many ways they can spite us, best let 'em go when they've a mind to, or they'll maybe do you a hurt."'*

There is a tract, warning young girls not on any account to become shopwomen, or engage in any occupation except domestic service, as that is the only employment where they are certain to be always protected by their masters and mistresses!-Englishwoman's Review.

*More About Farm Lads.'

The social condition of the saltworkers has for centuries been, and in most cases continues to be, a reproach to English civilisation. The heat of the stoves and pan-houses in which they work, and which frequently better deserve the name of their homes than the miserable hovels in which they huddle out of working hours, renders more than a minimum of clothing unnecessary if not burdensome, and even this minimum is not unfrequently dispensed with by both sexes. The work is necessarily continuous day and night, and from Monday morning to Saturday evening it often happens that the labourer never quits the precincts of the works, snatch

ing his intervals of rest beside the pans. Men and women, boys and girls, are thus exposed to more than all the debasing and demoralising influences which haunt the worst dwellings of our agricultural labourers, without a single antagonistic agency to prevent their lapse into the lowest depths of brutish immorality. The social condition of the saltworkers has consequently been, and probably still is, more abjectly degraded than that of any other class equally numerous, although their poverty is by no means so depressing. With scarcely an exception, wherever salt manufactures on a large scale have existed, the population employed in

them

them has been the disgrace and pollution of the neighbourhood, a community almost unapproachable by philanthropy and irreclaimable by religion. Happily we are able to record the dawn of better days in the district nearest to Birmingham.

It is now eight years since the employment of women at the Stoke Works was entirely discontinued by the proprietor, John Corbett, Esq., and although the full result of the measure will not be felt until a new generation has arisen, it has already acted on the habits and condition of the workpeople in such a manner as to produce a social revolution in the neighbourhood. Marriage, an institution previously almost ignored, has in a great measure superseded the indiscriminate concubinage resulting from the former conditions of labour; the dwellings of the workpeople, now continuously occupied, have very perceptibly improved, and if the condition of the saltworker from a social and moral point of view is still greatly lower than that of the average artisan, it is far higher than it ever has been, or indeed could be, under the old system. The reformation thus effected has also been materially aided by an alteration in the arrangement of the work introduced about five years ago. Formerly, one man only was usually appointed to take charge of each pan both by day and night, and was paid at the rate of 1s. 104d. per ton of salt manufactured. In place of this system, what is termed 'shift work' is now universally adopted at the Stoke Works. Two men, one for the day and one for the night, are appointed to each pan, and receive 2s. per ton proportionally divided between them, the higher rate of payment being compensated by the additional amount manufactured under the new system. Three assistants are required to each pan, who are paid by the men in charge of it out of their receipts for the salt manufactured. Much of the work can be done by boys and girls, and a father, by taking his children as his assistants, could make a considerable addition to his wages. A strong inducement is thus held out to parents to employ their children in such a manner as wholly to preclude their chance of obtaining any education, although at Stoke the inducement no longer exists in the case of girls. All the work is paid by the piece, and even in processes apparently so simple, an amount of judgment, experi

ence, tact, and dexterity is required which makes a wide difference between the wages of a good and a bad workman. A fair workman, on an average, at 2s. per ton, can, it is calculated, make about 28s. per week. Each head of a pan is paid 22s. weekly on account, and the balance is settled monthly, the work being appraised by the foreman of the salt works, who rejects or reduces the allowance for work in any way faulty or imperfect. About 500 hands are employed at Stoke Works, and the average amount of salt of all kinds manufactured is about 3,000 tons per week, with a consumption of from 1,500 to 2,000 tons of fuel. Previous to 1823, when the duty on salt, then as high as 15s. per bushel, was repealed, the entire annual produce of Droitwich did not amount to more than 9,000 tons, the entire produce of Worcestershire being now about 200,000 tons per annum. The Cheshire salt works are capable of producing a million tons per annum, but the supply being immensely in excess of the demand, many works are always standing both in the Cheshire and Worcestershire districts. The export trade of Worcestershire is about 50,000 tons annually; that of Cheshire about 650,000 tons.

A

The price of salt for many years has ranged within very narrow limits. Monthly meetings are held by the manufacturers, as in other trades, and arrangements made as to the rate of wages, the prices to be charged, and other matters affecting their common interests. The number of 'small masters' in the trade, however, renders any eflective combination among the manufacturers as difficult as the introduction of any substantial reform in the habits and condition of the work people. large portion of the trade in the aggregate at Droitwich is in the hands of such masters, who, not possessed of sufficient capital to undertake the manufacture on a scale large enough to permit the adoption of expensive improvements in machinery, or in the system of working and payment of wages, are still able, by employing their own family as workpeople, to produce salt at a rate so low as to render it difficult for those able to initiate the necessary reforms to realise an adequate remuneration from them. On the whole, therefore, although the experiment tried at Stoke has, we believe, been commercially as well as socially successful, and

must