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with water-tap. As a chief article of furniture there is not oftenmissing a wringing machine 1 , which serves for wringing-out the dampclothes, and which I have seldom missed in any of the houses ofthe cotton operatives visited by me. Behind the kitchen there isa small yard, with a shed for coals. A small staircase leads fromthe kitchen to the upper storey, whose two rooms are used forsleeping purposes, and are furnished with beds, drawers, etc.
This is the customary type of the operatives’ houses, of whichnot a few present more extensive furnishing. Generally, the firstthing in this respect is a sewing-machine. The similarity of thearchitecture is as astonishing as the furnishing. The worst typeof operatives’ houses, which at the present time is graduallydiminishing, differs from that described in that the yard and thekitchen disappear from behind, and the houses are built back toback, and the living-room downstairs takes up the whole areain front. The buildings which exist a.bo-ve the average have thekitchen connected to the house ;n the yard, so that below thereare two rooms, one opening to the front, the other to the back,which mostly means three rooms above. They also oftenpossess a special entrance hall.
These types of buildings occur in the factory towns near Man-chester, as well as in the seats of weaving in North Lancashire .The above-described building and furnishing cannot by anymeans, after the numerous instances I have seen, be regarded asa case standing above the average.
Quite especially as notable proof for the high standard of livingof the cotton operatives of Lancashire is the amount of capitalwidely distributed in their circles, which results from the balancesof the numerous operatives’ budgets. In this respect thereappears to be a sort of decentralisation of society by an increas-ing regular division of wealth—a consequence, as we have alreadyseen, of the centralised industrial development.' As opposed tothis, the view of Karl Marx is certainly wrong, that the workingclasses, in consequence of centralised industrial developmenteconomically pressed down, still rise up to political power, untilthey at last, holding political power in their hands, cause theeconomical reversal which would change them from non-possessorsto mutual possessors of existing capital. Economical decentralisa-tion—that is, a proportional division of wealth—has, much