the wages paid
by Bliss and Son, of Chipping Norton Woollen Factory.]

But the colliers and iron-workers are paid much higher wages. One of the
largest iron-masters recently published in the newspapers the names of
certain colliers in his employment who were receiving from four to five
pounds a week,--or equal to an annual income of from two hundred to two
hundred and fifty pounds a year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Richard Fothergill, Esq., M.P. He published a subsequent
letter, from which we extract the following:--

"No doubt such earnings seem large to clerks, and educated men, who
after receiving a costly education have often to struggle hard for
bread; but they are nevertheless the rightful earnings of steady manual
labour; and I have the pleasure of adding that, while all steady,
well-disposed colliers, in good health, could make equally good wages,
many hundreds in South Wales are quietly doing as much or more: witness
a steady collier in my employment, with his two sons living at home,
whose monthly pay ticket has averaged L30 for the past twelvemonth.

"Another steady collier within my information, aided by his son, h as
earned during the past five months upwards of L20 a month on the
average, and from his manual labour as an ordinary collier--for it is of
the working colliers and firemen I am speaking all along--he has built
fifteen good houses, and, disregarding all menaces, he continues his
habits of steady industry, whereby he hopes to accumulate an
independence for his family in all events."]

Iron-workers are paid a still higher rate of wages. A plate-roller
easily makes three hundred a year.[2] The rollers in rail mills often
make much more. In busy times they have made as much as from seven to
ten guineas a week, or equal to from three to five hundred a year.[3]
But, like the workers in cotton mills, the iron workers are often helped
by their sons, who are also paid high wages. Thus, the under-hands are
usually boys from fourteen years of age and upwards, who earn about
nineteen shillings a week, and the helpers are boys of under fourteen,
who earn about nine shillings a week.

[Footnote 2: See Messrs. Fox, Head, and Co.'s return, in the Blue Book
above referred to. This was the rate of wages at Middlesborough, in
Yorkshire. In South Wales, the wages of the principal operatives engaged
in the iron manufacture, recently, were--Puddlers. 9_s_. a day; first
heaters on the rail mills. 8_s_. 9_d_. a day: second