DARK SATANIC MILLS 6l

comfort and to the environment of the countryside, they found
themselves through causes beyond their ken deprived of their
wonted markets, undersold by cheap machine-made wares and
finally driven in desperation into the close air and foetid lanes of
the new towns where their wives and children could sell their
labour. The bottom had fallen out of their world. In a letter to
Oastler, the factory reformer, a Yorkshire workman described
how a fellow artisan, tramping Lancashire in search of work,
had come across an old acquaintance of his in a cellar in St.
Helens.

"There sat poor Jack near the fire, and what did he,
think you? why he sat arid mended his wife's stockings
with the bodkin; and as soon as he saw his old friend at
the doorpost he tried to hide them. But Joe had seen it, and
said: 'Jack, what the devil art thou doing? Where is the
missus ? Why, is that thy work? * and poor Jack was ashamed,
and said: * No, I know this is not my work, but my poor
missus is i* the factory; she has to leave at half-past five
and works till eight at night, and then she is so knocked up
that she cannot do aught when she gets home, so I hav.e to
do everything for her what I can, for I have no work, nor
had any for more nor three years, and I shall never have any
more-work while I live;' and then he wept a big tear. Jack
again said: * there is work enough for women folks and
childer hereabouts, but none for men; thou mayest sooner
find a hundred pound on the road than work for men—but
I should never have believed that either thou or any one
else would have seen me mending my wife's stockings, for
it is bad work. But she can hardly stand on her feet; I am
afraid she will be laid up, and then I don't know what is to
become of us, for it's a good bit that she had been the man
in the house and I the woman; it is bad work, Joe; ' and he
cried bitterly. . . . Now when Joe heard this, he told me
that he had cursed and damned the factories, and the masters,
and the Government, with all the curses that he had learned
while he was in the factory from a child*"1

When such simple Englishmen, feeling themselves cheated
and lost, turned for relief to their rulers they received little

145-6.