CHAPTER XII. A RAILWAY TOWN. Having now concluded our rough sketch of the workshops of the locomotive and coach departments at Crewe,--in both of which the Company’s artificers and workmen toil both winter and summer from six in the morning till half-past five in the evening, except on Saturdays, when they leave off at four,--our readers will, we hope, feel sufficiently interested in their welfare to inquire, as we anxiously did, a little into their domestic history and comforts. About a hundred yards from the two establishments we have just left there stands a plain neat building, erected by the Company, containing baths, hot, cold, and shower, for the workmen, as well as for their wives and daughters, the hours allotted for each sex being stated on a board, which bluntly enough explains that the women may wash while the men are working, and _vice versâ_. For this wholesome luxury the charge for each person is 1½_d._; and although we do not just at present recollect the exact price of yellow soap per bar, of sharp white sand per bushel, of stout dowlas-towelling per yard, or the cost of warming a few hundred gallons of water, yet, as we stood gazing into one of these baths, we could not help thinking that if that Hercules who works the steam-hammer can, on Saturday night after his week’s toil, be scrubbed perfectly clean and white for three half-pence, he can have no very great reason to complain, for surely, except by machinery, the operation could scarcely be effected much cheaper! To a medical man the Company gives a house and a surgery, in addition to which he receives from every unmarried workman 1_d._ per week; if married, but with no family, 1½_d._ per week; if married, and with a family, 2_d._ per week; for which he undertakes to give attendance and medicine to whatever men, women, children, or babies of the establishment may require them. A clergyman, with an adequate salary from the Company, superintends three large day-schools for about three hundred boys, girls, and infants. There is also a library and mechanic’s institute, supported by a subscription of about 10_s._ a year, at which a number of very respectable artificers, whose education when young was neglected, attend at night to learn, _ab initio_, reading, writing, and arithmetic. There is likewise a vocal and instrumental class, attended by a number of workmen, with their wives and daughters.