my

wo -

"TORIES.

69

to incur fresh ruin ever year. Af first, steam-engines were
put down at the principal mills; but these were soon stopped,
and bullock-wheels were substituted, which are now in use
at all the establishment.’ I saw them carding with engines
almost toothless ; the spinning, which is of low numbers,
running from 12 to 40, is of the worst possible kind; and,
in weaving, the lumps and knots keep the poor weaver in
constant activity cutting and patching his web. There is
one mill, built at the side of the river, which presents a
splendid appearance as you approach from Alexandria; it
contains the finest room-full of Sharp and Roberts’s looms
that I ever saw. The engine of this does not work, and
they have therefore turned these power-looms into handlooms,
 and are making cloth that could not be sold at any
price in Manchester. All this waste is going on with the
best raw cotton, which ought to be sold with us, and double
its weight of Surats bought for the manufacturer of such
low fabrics. This is not all the mischief, for the very hands
that are driven into these manufactures are torn from the
cultivation of the soil, which is turned into desert for want
of cultivation, whilst it might be the most fertile in the
world. But the most splendid of all his buildings is the
print-works. Think «f » couple of block shops, each nearly
2 hundred yards lon; sud fifteen feet high; imagine a croft
enclosed with solid wally, containing nearly fifty ncres, and
conceive this to be intersected with streams of water in all
directions, and with taps for letting on the water at any
particular place; think of such a place, compared with
which ours or the best of the Lancashire works are but
as barns, and then what do you say when I tell you that
one of these block-shops contained about fifteen tables ab
work, whilst in the other the tables were all piled up in
one corner, and the only occupants of it were a couple of
carpet-weavers trying to produce a hearth-rug! All this

1888.
Br 82,