DISTRESS OF HAND-LOOM WEAVERS 801 
The evidence adduced before the Commission on hand- 1 ad 
loom weavers seems to show that, even at that date, the evils 
which had been brought to light by the Industrial Revolu- 
tion, or arose in connection with it, were beginning to pass 
away. The conditions of sanitation and ventilation in the i 
factories were coming to compare favourably with those for health 
which prevailed in the cottages, and the moral tone of the 7 
factories had distinctly improved’. It certainly appears that 
in 1840 the stigma, which had formerly attached to operatives 
in the cotton-mills, was no longer deserved; at all events, 
the domestic weavers scarcely maintained their reputation 
as examples of honest toilz. The Commissioners gathered 
the impression® that the older generations of weavers 
were a fine class of men, though other evidence seems to 
show that there were black sheep among them; but the 
irade had been decaying since the great war, and those, who Jactory a 
had been brought up in it, under the new conditions of great 0 
irregularity and poor remuneration, were of the type of“ “dW 
dissipated men, and alternated periods of very severe work 
with periods of entire and not always involuntary idleness. 
That they were thus demoralised was undoubtedly their 
misfortune rather than their fault, but the fact is worth 
a 
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5 
1d 
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i 
seen the domestic weaver in his miserable apartments and the power-loom weaver 
in the factory, I do not hesitate to say that the advantages are all on the side of 
the latter. The one if a steady workman confines himself to a single room, in 
which he eats, drinks and sleeps, and breathes throughout the day an impure air. 
The other has not only the exercise of walking to and from the factory, but, when 
there, lives and breathes in a large roomy apartment, in which the air is con- 
stantly changed. * * * The reason of the better morals of the factory hands was 
said to be, ‘regularity of hours; regularity therefore of habits, and constant 
superintendence through the great part of the day. I believe * * * that journey- 
men tailors, journeymen shoemakers, domestic weavers, and all classes employed 
at piece-work, at their own homes, will be found to yield more readily to the 
temptations of idleness and intemperance than the classes who have to attend 
a warehouse or shop, or to work in a factory. One of the greatest advantages 
resulting from the progress of manufacturing industry is its tendency to raise 
the condition of women,” by offering an alternative employment to the needle. 
“The consciousness of independence * * * is favourable to the development of her 
best moral energies.” Reports, 1840, xx1v, 681. 
! Gaskell notes that there had been an improvement in this respect before 
1833. Manufacturing Population in England, 66. See Webb, Industrial Demo- 
tracy, 1x. 497, 
2 As early as 1833 the Glasgow weavers had a very bad reputation. Reports, 
1833, xx. 299. 
3 Accounts, 1839, xL11. 609. 
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