Metal work is hard and thirsty work, but it may be doubted whether what is really drunk while at work, or immediately after work, does harm. But it has long been, and still is, the habit of the mechanics in a number of trades, to make a holiday of Monday; it has even a local name--it is called Shackling day, "Shackling" being a term which can be perfectly translated by the French verb, flaner. A Shackler must drink, if not smoke. The more plentiful and pressing the work is, the more determined are the men engaged to make Saint Monday, and very often Tuesday and Wednesday also. The time so lost when trade is at high water, and the losses imposed on the manufacturer by the consequent non-fulfilment of contracts, eventually form a second drawback on the earnings of the workman, in addition to the day's wages lost, and the days' wages spent on "shackling days." Secondly, it has been proved that a large percentage of the married women engaged in work factories are compelled so to work to support their families in consequence of the improvidence of their husbands. Thirdly, in the same way children, from a very early age,--seven years, and even younger,--work in order to support their improvident parents. Women engaged in work all day cannot keep comfortable houses for their husbands. An uncomfortable home drives a husband, no matter of what rank, to the tavern or the club. The custom of sending children to work from the time they can earn sixpence a-week, renders education impossible. In the evenings they are only fit to sleep: on Sundays, in fine weather, the majority very naturally prefer walking in the fields to the dry task of acquiring knowledge, the value of which they are not sufficiently educated to appreciate. The effect of the want of education and the habit of idle Mondays on the male population is sufficiently lamentable. A man who can neither read nor write, in addition to the abstract pleasure Saxons have in drinking, finds an occupation and a substitute for ideas in a pot and pipe. The effect on the female population is even more baneful. They are so fully occupied that they have neither time to write, nor to cook, to read nor to sew, and they become wives and mothers with no better qualification for their important duties than girls educated in a fashionable school, without being able to obtain the assistance of servants and governesses. Wives engaged in factories are obliged to leave their children to the care of strangers or elder children, themselves scarcely above the age of children. One consequence is, that according to the report of a committee of physicians and surgeons in 1840: "The ratio of infant mortality in Birmingham is very considerable, greatly exceeding that of the metropolis, and of the agricultural districts, though not as high as in some provincial towns." "Severe burns and scalds, particularly the former, are so numerous, that in the general hospital two rooms are devoted for their reception."