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ledge that the people are better oft', their dwellings more comfort-able, their labour less arduous, and their lives altogether pleasanterthan those of their fathers and grandfathers. True, the housesare still grimy and smoky, and unsanitary back-to-back cottagestoo numerous ; but these are being gradually superseded by better-constructed dwellings, and there is hardly a considerable boroughwithout its parks and recreation grounds. Poverty and pauperism,the outcome of drink, idleness, accident, and disease, exist in themost prosperous communities; but in Lancashire none who areable and willing to work need to want. Wages were never so high,labour never more in demand. A good weaver, and weavers aremostly young women, can earn 24s. a week. A skilled workman,with two or three children working in the mills, is better off thanmany a country parson. There are families whose aggregateearnings amount to £400 a year. Lay labourers are in demandat 6d. an hour. Nor are high wages limited to the strictly manu-facturing districts. In the Fylde country, the garden of Lanca-shire , farming hands, generally young men, command from 9s. to11 s. a week the year round, with board, lodging, and washing, andfarms let without difficulty at £3 an acre. It is satisfactory tofind that prosperity has promoted thrift. Every village, almostevery hamlet, has its co-operative store, managed by working men,who provide the capital, and neither give nor take credit. Theagent of a large assurance company, whose district is partly in-dustrial, partly rural, informed me that it is difficult to find a manwhose life is uninsured, and benefit societies number their mem-bers by the million.
“ All this implies considerable activity. Lancashire people werenever slow-witted, and now, thanks to the extension of educationalfacilities and the multiplication of newspapers, they are becomeexceptionally intelligent. Fifty years ago, a manufacturer, fromwhom I had the story, opened a reading room for his hands, andsupplied it with suitable literature; but so few of them could readthat the others insisted on one of the better-instructed readingaloud to them, and as this led to confusion and bickering the roomhad to be closed. At that time there was not a single daily paperin the county, and the few local four-page papers sold for as manypence. One can now get a better paper for two farthings. A fewdays ago I was staying at a country house in the neighbourhood oftwo contiguous manufacturing villages, containing together sometwelve hundred inhabitants. In these two villages are three news-