ABSTRACT
One reason of there being so many females em ployed in the factories here, is, that the husbands and the fathers cannot, as they used to do, support them at home; and another unquestionably is, that the females can be induced to work for considerably lower wages. I occasionally entered into conversation with these men (the woolcombers and hand-loom weavers), and was informed of the sad effects that machinery had made in their trades, throwing a great many out of employment, and reducing the wages of those who had still a little work to do by hand. Your Lordship will please to bear in mind, that they cannot comb all sorts of wool by machinery, and I am inclined to think it would be better for the consumer, if they could
not comb any; for it is evident to any person who knows anything of machinery, that the staple or fibres of the wool must be greatly injured thereby. The men, boys, and girls, employed to attend the machines for combing wool, are very sickly-looking, emaciated beings. This work is calculated to ruin the strongest Constitution in seven or eight years. The men who have lost their work in consequence of the introduction of machinery, naturally thinking that “ half a loaf is better than no bread,” offered to do the little that was left to be done by hand, for less wages; and the manufacturers, seeing the labourmarket glutted, concluded they could have their work done at their own price. Hence, I found wool combers in Bradford working the same sort of wool for 1 Od. per Ib., for which, in 1838, they were receiving \s. 8d. per lb. Many of these woolcombers work at home, and in order to make up the deficiency in the family income, the wife, and children of very tender age, are compelled to take up a pair of combs; and thus, by tuming off a greater quantity, keep up their income as well as they can. This gluts the mar ket of labour still more. I have conversed with a man who had formerly been able to maintain his family in comfort by his own unassisted labours; and now, although he has the assistance of his wife, who works a pair of combs, standing from morning tili night at the pad post, he is scarcely able to keep a home to put his head in. The wages of the woolcombers, ge nerally, are not more than two-thirds, and in most cases only one-half, of what they were three years
ago, and great numbers have nothing at all to do. For this they blame machinery, as the chief cause of their sufferings, and such it undoubtedly is.
