ll, and the men earned about
twenty-four shillings a week, a sum which, with bread and all other
necessities of life at famine prices, barely sufficed for the support
of their families. The introduction of power looms threatened to abolish
their calling. It was true that although these machines wove the cloth
more evenly and smoothly than the hand looms, croppers were still
required to give the necessary smoothness of face; still the tendency
had been to lower wages.

The weavers were affected even more than the croppers, for strength and
skill were not so needed to tend the power looms as to work the hand
looms. Women and boys could do the work previously performed by men, and
the tendency of wages was everywhere to fall.

For years a deep spirit of discontent had been seething among the
operatives in the cotton and woolen manufactures, and there had been
riots more or less serious in Derbyshire, Nottingham, Lancashire and
Yorkshire, which in those days were the headquarters of these trades.
Factories had been burned, employers threatened and attacked, and the
obnoxious machines smashed. It was the vain struggle of the ignorant
and badly paid people to keep down production and to keep up wages, to
maintain manual labor against the power of the steam engine.

Hitherto factories had been rare, men working the frames in their own
homes, and utilizing the labor of their wives and families, and the
necessity of going miles away to work in the mills, where the looms were
driven by steam, added much to the discontent.

Having found his fishing appliances Ned hurried off to the school, where
his chum Tompkins was already waiting him, and the two set out at once
on their expedition.

They had four miles to walk to reach the spot where they intended to
fish. It was a quiet little stream with deep pools and many shadows, and
had its source in the heart of the moorlands. Neither of them had ever
tried it before, but they had heard it spoken of as one of the best
streams for fish in that part. On reaching its banks the rods were put
together, the hooks were baited with worms, and a deep pool being chosen
they set to work. After fishing for some time without success they tried
a pool higher up, and so mounted higher and higher up the stream, but
ever with the same want of success.

"How could they have said that this was a good place for fish?" Tompkins
said angrily at last. "Why, by this time it would have been hard luck if