Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/429

 NOTES AND MEMORANDA 407 subject occasioned by the Royal Commission, and they struck for a proper workshop to work in, and no work to be taken home. They carried both points, and the result, Mr. Lakeman says, is a visible 'improvement in the expression of workers once so stolid, so unim- passioned, but now showing an intellectual countenance and an eye of penetration.' The masters too are now pleased with the change, though it put them to some expense at first, because they find the people work better. The success of the Jewish shoemakers has now kindled the tailors to action. Mr. Henderson, Inspector for Scotland and the North of England, having through a rearrangement of districts come back to Blackburn after thirty years' absence, is struck to find that three-fourths of the factories are now rented, and only one-fourth of them owned, by their occupiers, whereas thirty years ago three- fourths of them were owned by their occupiers and only one-fourth rented. The change is certainly remarkable, and Mr. Henderson attributes it to the extension of the limited liability principle of part- nership, but it is not obvious how that p. rinciple should create the preference, and in Massachusetts it was reported by the Labour Bureau a few years ago that the joint stock companies generally owned their mills, while the individual employer often hired his. Mr. Henderson is also struck with the great superiority of the Lancashire female operative over the Scotch in industrial emciency, and finds in that circumstance, and no doubt correctly, the reason why the Scotch cotton manufacturer is going down before the competition of Lancashire. Mr. J. A. Redgrave, d propos of a recent fatal fire in an east-end factory, suggests a new subject for factory legislation--the institution of some such supervision in 'the construction of mills for the prevention of risk of life by fire as exists at present in the case of theatres and places of amusement. The REPORT ON EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION, by Mr. Giffen (1891, 147), consists of two parts, dealing respectively with the ' usual' statistics of emigration and immigration between the United Kingdom and extra-European countries, and the ' additional' tables added this year relating to the immigration of aliens from Europe. In the first part Mr. Giffen develops the theory which he pro- pounded in the corresponding reports of previous years concerning the variations of emigration and immigration. There is a tide in these affairs; such, that for a time both the flow of emigration and that of immigration, and the difference between them, the net efflux of popu- lation, rise together. But the tide of emigration turns before that of immigration, and then the net efflux begins to abate. This is the point at which we are at present emigration and net efflux diminishing, immigration still on the increase. To complete the period, the tide of immigration ought to turn; and then, after a period of low water, all the three flown gross influx, gross efflux, and net efflux will augment.