CARLISLE PATRIOT, Saturday, November 18, 1843 /ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE....PART 2 (to the Editor of the Carlisle Patriot) THE MANUFACTURERS AND THEIR LABOURERS LETTER 1 continued........................................... _____________________________________________________________ It is nothing that a man should be able to buy a single article like calico at a very cheap rate, if his means of purchasing all the necessaries, and all other comforts, be so seriously curtailed. The manufacturers say, nevertheless, although they reduce the means of buying, and although a man may get ten times as much cotton for his shilling as he could thirty years ago - yet, if the production of such cheap goods yields him no more than that shilling, they are very dear to him. The working man knows this well, and becomes more alive to the fact every day; and when the cry is raised that "comforts are cheaper", - which, by the way, means nothing more than that "cotton goods are cheaper", - the poor man need but inquire whether, with all this cheapness, he can boast of as many shirts as his father, or the workman of "dearer" days ? and to this questionn his answer must be in the negative. But there is another and a worse result from the excessive use of machinery - it supersedes adult labour altogether. Fathers, and those, who, by the laws of Nature and of God, are bound to provide for the wants of their families, are deprived of all chance of doing so, and the whole burden of labouring for the maintenance of the poor man's family devolves upon the children, whose tender age demands culture, and is unfit for toil. This of itself strikes at the root of the social system - exalts those whom Nature meant to be subordinate, and humiliates those whom it intended to have control; and I am firmly convinced that a very large portion of the crime now unhappily so rife in this kingdom, is traceable to this unnatural system which the introduction of machinery to the exclusion of adult labour has introduced. When pressed upon this point, I know the manufacturers, in this neighbourhood at least, turn round and say, "why these complaints ? there is full employment for the handloom weavers - nay, there is a demand for their labour " But, although this is true, there is nothing, perhaps, that illustrates more clearly the evils of the present system, or exposes more glaringly the shallow pretences of the mill-owners to philanthropy; for it is a fact, which every workman will confirm, that the material now given out to the operatives is such only - as is too weak to bear the stress of machinery ! It is a fact that the poor man, whose labour as a commodity is nearly valueless, in consequence of his inability to compete with the machine, has to toil doubly, day after day, in manufacturing a material too inferior for the machine, and which cannot be wrought without his aid; and what are his wages after all -- some seven or eight shillings a week ! Part 3 of this letter will follow........................................................ ====================================================