Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/488

 466 TH ECONOMIC JOURNAL The worsted cloth mills referred to make the best class of worsted coatings, &c. Their weavers are nearly all skilled women, very few being under eighteen. The table of wages of weavers, therefore, represents wages of adult women doing the best work in the trade. Other cloth mills would have a considerable per- centage of younger girls, and except in the very few mills making really good cloth, 18s. would be about the maximum instead of 21s. The averages of each woman for one month in June, 1883, and for another month, the last fortnight in February and the first in March, 1891, have been taken, and the percentages calculated on those averages. A considerable number of the spinners, drawers, knotters, warpers, &c., are under eighteen, but I do not know the proportion. The introduction of shoddy brought in its train a demand for rag sorters, whose work, unfortunately, can never be done by machinery. At least it is difficult to believe that machines will ever be able to distinguish colours. About 500 women and girls are supposed to be employed as rag sorters in Leeds. They are nearly all Irish, and many of them are married women with unsatisfactory husbands. In one of these ragshops (called by the Irish in the neighbourhood by the euphonious name of ' cloth warehouses. ') about 80 women and girls are employed, one fore- woman bemg set over every twenty. Those girls who after a fortnight's teaching and a short probation do not do more than a certain quantity are dismissed; the others are paid 8s. a week; the forewomen receive 10s. a week. The hours are from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., with one and a half hours for meals. Here they only sort new rags, such as tailors' snippings, &c. There was therefore but little odour, and the ventilation, perfect for the warm day on which I visited the place, suggested a danger of being frozen on a cold one. Unpleasant as rag sorting must be to those who have prejudices in fayour of cleanliness, ! have never seen any group of workers suffering less from depression. In the cloth factories the noise of machinery and the distance between the workers make singing and conversation impossible. In the ragshops it is quite different. In every room the girls were singing, and in one ' I am the Ghost of John James Christopher Benjamin Binns,' chanted in chorus, was quite impressive. Especially noticeable, too, was the air of vitality, of enjoyment of life, only to be seen in Conjunction with the reckless irresponsibility of lrish working- girls at the bottom of the social scale. In another shop old rags were sorted, and somewhat higher wages were paid because it was situated in one of the better parts of the town, where such labore-