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considered domestic employment, they are not under registration or visitation, except upon complaint made on sanitary grounds. A great improvement has been going on in regard to the age at which these children begin to do this kind of work, and the hours of their daily labour. The change dates from Mr. Grainger's report on this important subject in 1811.

V. The remaining department of female labour in connection with the machine lace trade, is that of embroiderers with hook or needle, tambourers, or lace runners, once amounting to 150,000, now reduced to a sixth of that number. Their average weekly earnings in 1836 was 45.; now it is doubled, and more for the better kinds of work. As fast as the improved machinery produced figured work, nearly finished on the machines ready for sale, the lace embroiderers were cast aside. About 1840 an immigration set into Nottingham from all the districts within fifty miles, to supply the increasing warehouse and out-door female labour required in both the lace and hosiery trades. There has thus been added to the already preponderating female population of the place, 13,000 within the last twenty-six years. In these three classes it is computed there are from 90,000 to 100,000 females, which, added to the 38,000 above enumerated, makes a total of about 135,000 employed in the lace trade of Nottingham in 1865. The materials worked up cost about 1,715,000l.; the wages and profits amounted to 3,415,000l. or thereabouts; and the net returns may be stated at 5,130,00ol.

VI. In the hosiery business of Nottingham, there were at work in 1865 11,000 narrow hand machines, employing domestically 7,500 men and 3,500 women and youths, at wages from 63. to 268., averaging, by the statements of the hands themselves, 108.6d. weekly; also 4,250 wide hand machines, likewise domestically employing 4,250 men, from 1os. to 308., averaging, according to the workmen's statement, 158. weekly wages. These 15,250 hand frames were placed in 4,620 shops, in eighty parishes spread over the county of Nottingham. The entire average wages of 42,000 frames at work throughout the whole of the hosiery trade in 1844 was about 6s. a-week only. These two classes of Nottinghamshire hand machines, it is computed, give employment to about 20,000 women and girls as winders and seamers, earning 4s. each on an average. There are about 1,000 wide power rotary frames, employing 700 men, at from 203. to 328.; and about 16,000 girls and women, seamers and winders, on an average of 58. weekly. There are about 1,200 sets of circular round power frames improved, employing 500 men and 500 youths,

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at from 12s. to 358. weekly; and 1,000 women, getting 125. to 20%. weekly wages. The winders, cutters, menders, and others attached to these are about 11,000 women and girls, averaging 78. to 128. a-week. And there are about 400 warp machines making hosiery by power, employing 400 men, at 148. to 358.; and 200 youths, at 128. to 208.; besides 400 warpers, &c. (men), gaining about 258.; and also 2,000 women and girls, stitching, &c., at 88. a-week on an average.

It is probable that there are 2,000 men employed in bleaching, dyeing, &c., and as porters, &c., at 2os. to 358. weekly; besides 5,000 menders, folders, &c., working in warehouses, at from 8s. to 128. weekly. To these must be added the warehousemen and clerks in eighty establishments for finishing and sale of goods in Nottingham. The Nottingham hosiery business is now believed to be giving employment to about 17,000 males and 44,000 femalestogether 61,000 work people. The estimated returns amounted in 1865 to about 3,000,oool.

VII. The two staple trades of Nottingham, therefore, distributed in returns an amount of somewhat more than 8,000,000l. sterling last year, and furnished, in the aggregate, employment to nearly 200,000 workpeople.

VIII. The hosiery hand frames here stated, were enumerated throughout the whole trade by my census in 1844; and the results are given with much minuteness in a paper read in this Section at the York Meeting of the British Association, where the terrible details of suffering then, and for forty years previously, endured, caused much interest and sympathy. Happily the state of things then described is now entirely changed, and the labour of the stocking maker being in larger demand than the supply, both employed and employer are enjoying an amount of prosperity never before realised, but which, we hope, may be long continued.

IX. It will be an explanation of some interest to those who are strangers to the processes of these trades, to state that the handknitter of a stocking, if assiduous and clever, will knit 100 loops in a minute; and that Lee, on his first machine, made 1,000 of worsted, and on his second 1,500 loops of silk per minute. The visitor may now see made on the round frame, patented by Brunel in 1816, but since modified and improved, without any effort of the attendant but to supply yarn, 250,000 loops of the finest textures made, in various colours, per minute, with safety; an advance of 2,500-fold upon the hand-knitter. Also, that while a pillow-lace maker can form five meshes per minute by her skilful and pliable fingers, Heathcoat, in his first essay upon his bobbin net machine, made 1,000, and, before the expiration of his patent, 10,000 of these meshes per minute; a man sitting to overlook his machine now, will watch its movements producing 50,000 meshes per minute-an increase of 10,000-fold on the cushion labourer's arduous and painstaking task. The inathematical nicety of the construction of each of these machines necessary to their secure working; the beautiful simplicity of the looping stocking-frames, contrasted with the complexity and rapidity of movement through confined spaces of the thousands of bobbins and carriages, in the mesh-making and embroidering bobbin net machines, will be found to surpass the greater part of the machinery employed in any other manufacture whatever.

X. Two or three particular points in connection with the present operations of these trades will interest this Section. A hundred years ago almost all stockings were widened and narrowed on the frame, as they had been by hand knitting, so as to fit the leg and foot exactly with neatness and comfort to the wearer. These were called full-fashioned hose. Seventy or eighty years ago the practice of making goods straight down in the leg first began; these were called spurious goods. From that time till 1815 Parliament was on several occasions informed that this practice caused distress, and applied to to declare this mode of making stockings illegal; but these petitions were without legislative result. Brunel's round frame makes knitted sacks without fashion, and the round web is shaped by scissors and sewn up by stitching machines or hand. One head will produce weekly thirty dozen of women's hose, sold at 3d. to 6d. a pair. At first the manufacture of these goods was hateful to the greater portion both of masters and men. So far, however, from the trade being ruined by them, it has become better than for a century past, in every branch. No doubt very many minds have been at work to produce this result; by their efforts we are clothing the feet of millions of people, who twenty years ago knew nothing of the use of stockings; these will in all probability prove precursors of demand for the better and more costly articles. At least 30,000 persons are employed by these round frames.

XI. In the working of power lace machines, there is still the anomaly of eighteen hours' continued working of the engine in the midland factories. The women and children are now withdrawn from night labour. It is more than questionable whether the natural hours of

adult male labour might not, if universally adopted, result in, at least, equal advantage to the owners of these machines, costly as they are, yet working to little profit, and conduce greatly to the comfort and morality of the workmen and their families.

XII. In conclusion, the condition of the children, probably not much fewer than 40,000 employed by mistresses, and the circumstances attending such numbers being confined so many hours in rooms not intended for workshops, would seem to call for authorised inspection, and, I think, for registration also. The evidence taken by Mr. White, a sub-commissioner, in 1863, upon the subject of the employment of children in these trades, and his report thereon, are full of important matter; deserving of early practical notice, with a view not only to these young people working under circumstances more favourable to their health and morals, but also to their obtaining a sound education; which, under existing arrangements, is for the most part out of the question.

VOL. XXIX.

PART IV.

20

A NOTICE of PROFESSOR J. E. T. ROGERS'S HISTORY of

AGRICULTURE and PRICES in ENGLAND, 1259-1400.
WILLIAM NEWMARCH, F.R.S.

Ву

[Delivered before the Statistical Society, 20th November, 1866, and taken from

the Report of the Proceedings in the "Insurance Record.”]

MR. CHAIRMAN—There was presented to the meeting of the International Statistical Congress, held in London in 1860, a paper entitled “On Methods of Investigation as regards Statistics of “ Prices and of Wages in the Principal Trades," and it was a leading recommendation of that paper that efforts should be made, not only in this country, but also in other parts of Europe, to investigate statistically and economically the facts, so far as they could be collected, relating to the medieval period of European history, beginning about the year 1300 and extending onwards, as pointed out in the paper, according to certain lines and according to certain divisions, down to the present time. And it was shown in that paper

“ Still speaking of the historical period (1400-1700), it is likely that it may not be possible to collect a continuous and authentic body of data sufficient to establish decisively more than the two important elements (Category I) of the (1.) Prices of leading kinds of grain. (2.) Wages of common agricultural labour. But it is desirable that, as far as practicable, facts should be sought for relating to the eight following further heads of inquiry, viz. (Category II). (3.) Price of land of different kinds. (4.) Rent of land and interest of money lent on ample mortgage. (5.) Rent of houses and cottages. (6.) Prices of horses, cattle, sheep, poultry. (7.) Prices of butchers' meat and other provisions. (8.) Prices of clothes and furniture. (9.) Wages of artizan and skilled labour. (10.) Cost and time of conveyance from place to place or over given-distances. The diversity of circumstances affecting the money value, from time to time, of all the objects comprised under these last eight heads, is so great that it would be futile to attempt any classification of them. No more can be said, than that any observation under any of these eight heads (Category II), can be of no scientific use unless it attends carefully to time, place, quantity, quality, and local specialties. The advantage of the two inquiries in Category (1) is, that they present the more simple units through long periods of years. The price of the leading kinds of grain represents the money value of a description of raw produce, which in itself changes but slowly as regards quality, and the production of which, through considerable intervals of time, implies the application of the same amount and kind of labour, skill, and capitul. In like manner the wages of the commoner kinds of agricultural labour represents, for long periods, the money price of almost the same kind and amount of services rendered by labourers seeking employment ander the same

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