"Give me a lift and I'll show thee," said the
lad.

The gentleman agreed to the bargain, the lad
climbed into the gig, and, his arms akimbo,
looked proudly about. Presently he passed a
factory companion.

"Why, what art doin' there?" cried the lad
in the road.

The lad in the gig bobbed his head towards
the gentleman at his side, and answered:

"Only showin' this fellow here t' Bacup."

A great cotton-spinner, who was guiding me
over his mill, was accosted by one of the operatives.
The man wanted to speak with his employer.

"In five minutes," said the employer.

"That'll do," answered the man, with the air
of an owner who was granting his slave a respite.
I shall presently see my independent friend at a
public meeting, and hear him discuss a statement
of prices.

"Heh!" cries a Lancashire friend of mine,
"but there is a sorry time coming for us. We
are busy now, but wait till trade slackens. Now,
the men are our rulers. Mills are building in
all directions; and even as it is, there are not
enough hands to work all the looms in the great
weaving sheds we have. Let the operatives
have a little more power, and remain no better
affected towards their employers than they are
at this present time; and, alack! dark days will
be passed in Lancashire."

My early impression as I wander through a
Lancashire town of cotton-mills for the first
time, is, that this off-hand manner of masters
and men covers enmity. In the great carding-
rooms, and spinning-rooms, in the weaving-
sheds, and where the "devil" first beats the
cotton from the bale, the master passes with
his guests, unheeding the weavers and spinners;
these, unheeding him, or glancing coldly
—perhaps scornfully— at the party. Both
interests are powerful: each is suspicious of the
other. Last year, a certain master of my
acquaintance gave all his hands—some eleven or
twelve hundred— a treat. At his sole expense
this great party was conveyed to Liverpool and
back, and liberally regaled. The treat had a
bad effect upon the operatives: they met to
discuss the reason for the master's liberality.
Had he devised some cunning scheme by which
he might get an advantage at their expense?
This suspicion was his sole reward. The treat was
not repeated in the following year. The omission
became a grievance, and the master
remains unpopular in his mills.

There is the other side of the question.
Masters are sometimes cunning too. They
sometimes scheme to get more work, for a
stipulated wage, than is due. They are sometimes
keen framers of arbitrary mill laws. And
so, when there is work and plenty of it, the
operatives turn the screw upon the masters,
and when work is scanty the employers turn
the screw upon them. The day comes when it
is advantageous to the master to close the mill.
The bear is fat, and can live, self-sustaining,
through a long winter; but woe unto the bears
that are lean, woe unto the working bears when
the frost sets in!

This is sad; but I hope Ralph and Johnny,
whom I am to meet, when they have " cleaned
themselves up" some night, after seven, will be
able to give me some cheerful news. I hope
Tobias Deloom, Esquire, of the Grange, under
whose ample roof I am presently to find myself
(Tobias was Toby, and wore wooden clogs, and
threw the shuttle when he was twenty, and he
is now " in the habit of buying estates"), I hope
my host will have stories to tell me of gentle
things said and done by him to abate the
hostility of the two great armies that front and
menace each other, with every change of the
sky, in the rich north-west of England.

"We don't do quite enough for the men from
whom we get so much," Mr. Deloom has already
allowed. And he has given me some experiences
of his, showing the advantage the master has in
approaching his operatives on friendly terms.
He had experienced the evils of a strike some
years ago. After the men had returned to work
he suggested that they should meet him once a
week. He and they would jointly form a Mutual
Improvement Society, and they would discuss
capital and labour questions. The experiment
redounded to the honour of the operatives. The
employer was impressed by the great intelligence
and the '" unadorned eloquence" of the employed.
"I told Cobden," said Deloom, " I had a man
in my employ I would match against him any
day upon a platform."

Is this unadorned eloquence to be devoted to
the cause of prosperity and order, or to that of
ruin and disorder? I ask myself the question with
a certain tremor; for, on all sides, the mills are
being newly winged, and vast weavers' sheds, like
the larger courts of the old Crystal Palace, are
rising. I ask myself this question with particular
emphasis, as I trudge along the black road,
past miners or colliers who look like Ethiopian
serenaders in undress, from Burnley to unquiet
Padiham. It is pleasant to be clear of Burnley.
The clatter of its machinery—the cranks, and
wheels, and greasy piston-rods that are plunging
and groaning at every window of its wheel-worn,
uneven streets— have churned my brain. A
weary trudge up a steep hill, past donkeys
tugging at loaded coal-carts, and men dragging
trucks of cotton bales through the dusky
mud, only leaves me in sight of bricklayers,
still rearing more red brick mills in the
adjoining fields. I look towards the valleys:
they are bristling with chimneys, thick as the
barrel of a musical box bristles with tuneful
spikes. By the sweat of his brow, from six till
six, doth every man, woman, and child here-
abouts eat bread.

As I approach Padiham, Stubborn Fact points
to a noble domain, where dwells the kind
master of the district. He is a politician as
well as an employer. "He," cries Stubborn
Fact, in my ear, " gossips with an operative
as familiarly as with a peer. Not many days
have passed, since he called some of these black