198
For ti "Teat many years it has been customary to have a week’smill holiday in most of the industrial places of Lancashire . Thistakes place in the months of July to September (the so-calledwakes). A largo portion of the cotton operatives, as well asmachine workers, use a portion of the savings they have made fortrips and journeys for their health. Everywhere there existspecial savings clubs, in which, for the object we are treating of,payments are made during the whole year (so-called “ going-offclubs.’’) In Oldham alone for the last few years there was at thecommencement of t-lie holidays, ,£65,000 drawn annually fromthese clubs for trips, of which about £45,000 fell to the cottonoperatives and £20,000 to the machine workers at Watt's andother machine works, as confirmed to me by Mr. Andrew.
The operatives then disperse to the neighbouring hilly countryof Derbyshire and the districts of the English coasts; many ofthem go to London in order to visit the sights there worth seeing,and some oven extend their travels to the Continent (9). Butmore jiopular than anything else is the seaside. Especiallycrowded in these days by trippers is the Isle of Man and thatseaside resort, Blackpool, situated in Lancashire .
Along with a clergyman of my acquaintance, who wished tovisit his parishioners on one of these holiday days in Blackpool , Iwent to the seaside place mentioned. Arriving there by one ofthe excursion trains, wo strode through the over-filled little town,consisting of lodging-houses, and betook ourselves to the beach.As far as the eye could follow, on the sands surged thousands ofpeople, well nourished and well dressed; the men mostly of thatstrong, rather plump build, as mostly appears to us in English-men ; the girls and women, in growth, stature, and colour of com-plexion, in many instances genuine Britons, along with a fewCeltic types. “ Ninety per cent, of these people,” my companioninformed .me, "are mill-hands,” i.c., operatives of the cotton in-
were closed for four days. ‘ Have you no work to do, that you are closed ?What will your workmen do the whole time ?’ ‘ We are obliged to close for
annual holidays,’was mv leply, ‘and our workmen will in most cases go tosome watering place or other for three or four days.’ The incredulous smilewith which this was received left no doubt whatever on my mind that I wasrisking my reputation for telling the truth. Not on this occasion alone hasthis phase of the English workman’s life been received with suspicion. Theaverage German employer cannot grasp the fact that a workman has the rightto a respite from manual toil as well as he a respite from brain work.”—Translator.
9. Compare “ Co-operative Wholesale Annual,” 1884, p. 200.