ABSTRACT
Before dealing with the Lumpers, or those who discharge the timber and other ships-in contradiction to the Stevedores, or those who stow the cargoes of vessels-! will give the following report of a meeting held yesterday afternoon among the Ballast-heavers' wives. It is the wife and children who are the real sufferers from the intemperance of the working man; and being anxious to give the public some idea of the amount of misery entailed upon these poor creatures by the compulsory and induced drunkenness of the husbands, I requested as many as could leave their homes to meet me at the British and Foreign School, in Shakespeare-walk, Shadwell. The meeting consisted of the wives of ballast-heavers and coal-whippers. The wives of the coal-whippers had come there to contrast their present state with their past, with the view of showing the misery which they had endured when their husbands were under the same thraldom to the publican as the ballast-heavers are now. and the comparative happiness which they have experienced since they have been freed from it. They had attended unsolicited, in the hope, by making their statements public, of getting for the ballastheavers the same freedom from the control of the publican which the coal-whippers had obtained.
