ies of firms,
well known in South Lancashire. We mean the cotton-spinning mills of the
Messrs. Ashworth at Egerton and New Eagley. They have been in existence
for more than seventy years. They have been repeatedly enlarged, and
increasing numbers of workpeople have been employed at the uniform wages
paid throughout the district. Workmen earn from seventeen shillings to
two pounds a week. Women-weavers can earn as much as twenty-one
shillings a week. Where the parents have children, the united earnings
of families amount to as much as from L150 to L200 a year.

Then, as to what the Ashworths have done for the benefit of their
workpeople. Schooling, by means of mutual instruction classes, was in
operation from the first; but about the year 1825, when the works were
greatly enlarged, and the population was considerably increased, a day
school was opened for children, which was used as an evening school for
young men, as well as for a Sunday-school. The continued extension of
the works led to an enlargement of the school accommodation; and while
this was being provided, arrangements were made for a news-room,
library, and for the performance of divine worship on Sundays. A
cricket-ground was also provided for the use of young people.

Misgivings were not unfrequently expressed that the zeal and expenditure
incurred by the Messrs. Ashworth might one day be turned against them,
to their annoyance and pecuniary loss. The prediction was realized in
only a single instance. A young man of considerable talent, who when a
child had been removed to the factory from a neighbouring workhouse,
made very rapid progress at school, especially in arithmetic; and when a
strike of the workpeople occurred in 1830, one of the great strike
years, he became very officious as a leader. The strike was defeated by
the employment of new hands, and it was attributed to the influence of
this young man that the employed were brutally assailed by an infuriated
mob, and that the windows of the schoolroom were smashed, and other
works of destruction committed.

The employers, nevertheless, pursued their original design. They
repaired the school-house, and endeavoured to increase the efficacy of
the teaching. They believed that nothing was better calculated to remove
ignorant infatuation than increased schooling. In a great many
instances, the heads of the families had previously been engaged as
hand-loom weavers, or in some pastoral pursuit; and it beca