§ 4. THE CONDITION OF THE MANUFACTURING POPULATION--For it is a significant fact that under the old domestic system, simple and cumbrous as it was, the manufacturing population was very much better off than it was for some time after the Industrial Revolution. For one thing, they still lived more or less in the country and were not crowded together in stifling alleys and courts, or long rows of bare smoke-begrimed streets, in houses like so many dirty rabbit-hutches. Even if the artisan did live in a town at that time, the town was very different from the abodes of smoke and dirt which now prevail in the manufacturing districts. There were no tall chimneys, belching forth clouds of evil smoke; no huge, hot factories with their hundreds of windows blazing forth a lurid light in the darkness, and rattling with the whir and din of ceaseless machinery by day and night. There were no gigantic blast furnaces rising amid blackened heaps of cinders, or chemical works poisoning the fields and trees for miles around. These were yet to come. The factory and the furnace were almost unknown. Work was carried on by the artisan in his little stone or brick house, with the workshop inside, where the wool for the weft was carded and spun by his wife and daughters, and the cloth was woven by himself and his sons. He had also, in nearly all cases, his plot of land near the house, which provided him both with food and recreation, for he could relieve the monotony of weaving by cultivating his little patch of ground, or feeding his pigs and poultry. Work too was more regular than it {150} often is at present, for there were fewer commercial fluctuations; fashions did not change so quickly, and the market for home-spun fabrics was always steady and assured. The relations between employers and employed were far closer; even the distribution of wealth was comparatively more equal. Wages were of course less in money value than at present, but then prices of food and rent were only about half what they are now. Arthur Young gives 9_s._ 6_d._ as the average weekly wages of an artisan in the North and Midland counties, while the average rent for a cottage in the same counties he puts at 28_s._ 2_d._ a year, or only 6⁠½_d._ per week. And it must be remembered that this included a piece of land round the cottage. Meat, also, was cheap, being from 2⁠½_d._ to 3⁠¼_d._ per pound; and bread 1⁠¼_d._ a pound. In fact we may confidently say that artisans, especially spinners and weavers, were well off about 1760. Adam Smith testifies to this in the _Wealth of Nations_. “Not only has grain become somewhat cheaper,” he says, “but many other things from which the industrious poor derive an agreeable and wholesome variety of food have become a great deal cheaper.” And the healthy condition of industry in general is shown by the fact that at the close of the wars with France by the Peace of 1763, when more than 100,000 men accustomed to war were thrown