AND ON THE CONTINENT.
205
CONCLUSION.
In conclusion, there are two misunderstandings to be avoided. By no means is it to be accepted, in the first place, that the present economical and social conditions of the staple industry o! Lancashire are in general those of English industry. Much rather, in the field of English textile industry, are the various stages ol' the development of centralised industry to be seen at the present time side by side. Accordingly we meet here also social conditions which possess much similarity with those of Lancashire in the '“thirties” and of the present German.
If we go, say, for instance, from Manchester to Bradford, the centre of the worsted industry, we enter into another economical as well as social world. Even the raw-material market is here less developed than that for cotton. While the spinner in Lancashire buys from week to week, the wool is sold at half-yearly auctions in Liverpool. Therewith there is a special class of wool- buyers necessary in Bradford, who attend to the mixing and combing of the wool on commission. Both occupations have, throughout, the character of a season business. They are done during one part of the year in day and night shifts, whereby the wages are low, and the conditions of labour are opposed to health. For instance, the wool-combers (one to every two combing machines), who labour, in the night shift, 60 hours per week at 120 deg. F., have no more than £1 per week, and lose 20 weeks in the year for want of work.
In economical development the worsted spinning and weaving of Bradford stands behind, compared with Lancashire ; 10,000 spindles are given me as the average number for the worstedspinning mills of Yorkshire , and 60 to 100 looms for the average weaving-mills in Bradford. Where there are exceptionally large mills they do not depend upon the “limited” principle, which is in genera] little developed, hut on the monopoly of some specialty or other. Hereto belong, for instance, the weaving-mills in Saltaire.