gin to pay the parents a fixed sum for board and lodging,
and keep the rest for themselves. This often happens from the fourteenth
or fifteenth year. {144} In a word, the children emancipate themselves,
and regard the paternal dwelling as a lodging-house, which they often
exchange for another, as suits them.

In many cases the family is not wholly dissolved by the employment of the
wife, but turned upside down. The wife supports the family, the husband
sits at home, tends the children, sweeps the room and cooks. This case
happens very frequently; in Manchester alone, many hundred such men could
be cited, condemned to domestic occupations. It is easy to imagine the
wrath aroused among the working-men by this reversal of all relations
within the family, while the other social conditions remain unchanged.
There lies before me a letter from an English working-man, Robert
Pounder, Baron's Buildings, Woodhouse, Moorside, in Leeds (the
bourgeoisie may hunt him up there; I give the exact address for the
purpose), written by him to Oastler: {145}

He relates how another working-man, being on tramp, came to St. Helens,
in Lancashire, and there looked up an old friend. He found him in a
miserable, damp cellar, scarcely furnished; and when my poor friend went
in, there sat poor Jack near the fire, and what did he, think you? why he
sat and mended his wife's stockings with the bodkin; and as soon as he
saw his old friend at the door-post, he tried to hide them. But Joe,
that is my friend's name, had seen it, and said: "Jack, what the devil
art thou doing? Where is the missus? Why, is that thy work?" and poor
Jack was ashamed, and said: "No, I know this is not my work, but my poor
missus is i' th' factory; she has to leave at half-past five and works
till eight at night, and then she is so knocked up that she cannot do
aught when she gets home, so I have to do everything for her what I can,
for I have no work, nor had any for more nor three years, and I shall
never have any more work while I live;" and then he wept a big tear. Jack
again said: "There is work enough for women folks and childer hereabouts,
but none for men; thou mayest sooner find a hundred pound on the road
than work for men--but I should never have believed that either thou or
any one else would have seen me mending my wife's stockings, for, it is
bad work. But she can hardly stand on her feet; I am afraid she will be
laid up, and then I don't know what is