attainable by doing so, why should a man bestir
himself at the usual time? How easy to get
out of the habit of early rising under these
circumstances, how hard to return to it!

The importance, then, of providing work for
the immense numbers of factory hands who are
out of employment, can by no possibility be over-
estimated. Means of employment are not wanted
here by way of a labour-test, but as being
entirely essential to the well-being of the people.
What is the nature of that employment to be?
For many forms of labour these men are unfitted
by their bringing up and previous way of life.
Out-door labour, and indeed hard manual work
of all kinds, they are manifestly unfit for.
Anything, again, that would imply their removal to
distant places would be liable to objection. We
are creatures of custom, and go best in our
habitual grooves. The hands belonging to a
particular mill, will be, of all human beings, those
most wanted on that mill when the day comes
for the machinery to be set a-going again.
Unless such changes take place in human affairs
as it would be idle to contemplate, there is
no doubt that those mills will be set a-going
again, and then all these people will be wanted
once more. This crisis once over, there will be
a great revival of the cotton trade, and grand
times again for Lancashire.

Men, therefore, have been set to work at
different trades, for which they have in many cases
displayed considerable aptitude; they have been
employed—particularly the superior class of
them, such as book-keepers and overlookers—
in posts connected with the administration of
relief; and large numbers have been induced to
take this opportunity of getting themselves
educated, and spend their hours of compulsory
leisure at school. As for the women and
girls, it is easier to find suitable occupation
for them than for the men: most women's work
being of the sedentary sort, and something akin
to the ordinary employment of the factory-girl.
Among the good things which will result from
this very disaster in Lancashire—and we may
hope that many good things will result from
it—not the least will be the advance of all
these women and girls in a knowledge of the
use of the needle—a kind of knowledge in
which they were singularly deficient.

I went into one room at Blackburn, in which
not less than four hundred girls and unmarried
women were sitting working at needlework.
In the same building was a room where a group
of girls were working at straw-plaiting, and had
picked up the art with wonderful quickness and
dexterity. In other rooms were more than a
hundred married women, who were all provided with
a comfortable warm asylum, where they were kept
employed, and where they earned two shillings a
week. All these classes are under the
superintendence of ladies; but I saw others at
Manchester which were overlooked by monitors
chosen from among the girls themselves, which
seemed also to be working admirably well. In
one of these, a girl seated on a table was reading
aloud to the rest while they worked, or knitted.
It was some simple tale of a religious tendency,
but which was listened to with absolute eagerness.
Some of these girls are rough and
unmannered, and I heard that a marked improvement
had been effected in their conduct since,
in attending these classes, they had mingled
with, and observed, the ladies who superintend
them.

Here I must mention a want which those
who have organised these sewing-classes feel
very much, and which I hope only needs to be
known to be supplied—the want of needles
and pins. It is difficult to make the young
girls careful of them, and great numbers are
broken and lost; a fact in some degree attributable,
no doubt, to the inexperience of the
embryo-needlewomen. It would save many pounds
to the Fund, if some benevolent individuals
who may read this, would make collections of
pins and needles, and forward them to the
Relief Committee, especially philanthropical
manufacturers of such articles in the good town of
Birmingham.

It is easier to provide sedentary occupation
for women than for men. Of all the experiments
made with a view of meeting this
difficulty, the most satisfactory appeared to be those
of an educational kind. Everything that keeps
men busy, that makes them handy, and enables
them hereafter to be more useful to their
families, is good. I saw boys at work at tailoring,
mounted on a counter in professional style with
their legs crossed under them. I saw men at
work as joiners, fitting up benches and doing
other simple carpenters' jobs uncommonly well;
indeed, the way in which they morticed in the
joints, and calculated their distances, was
astonishing to any one acquainted with the difficulties
of amateur-carpentering. Others engaged
in shoe-mending had completely mastered all the
difficulties of securing the sole to the "uppers,"
and who doubtless were even fully acquainted
with all the mysteries of the "welt." Still,
good as all this is, and in every way reassuring,
it appears to me that these classes—educational,
too, in a certain way—were less important, and
less interesting, than those which were intellectually
educational.

The schools, whose benches and desks are
occupied by rows of grown-up men and grey-
headed students, are full of interest. Late
indeed have some of the hoary pupils
wandered for the first time into the groves of
Academe. In one of the schools, no less than
three hundred and eighty men of all ages are
assembled. As you glanced down the line of
faces the scene was not a little touching.
You saw men clasping their bald heads, as if
to keep them from splitting over sums in
addition; you saw some helping each other;
you saw others who, for their superior attainments
probably, had been selected as monitors.
And sometimes you saw men, young,
strong, energetic, giving their whole capacity
to what they were about, aiming at higher things
than their neighbours as they felt themselves
stronger on the wing, and laying, perhaps, then