Next to the shortage, or the high price, of raw material, or the slackness of trade, the greatest evil is that of the glutted market, caused by over-production, hardly possible before the days of machinery; an evil which is most often caused by the competition of manufacturers, who continue to manufacture, each one in the hope that, whoever else suffers, he at least will not. Over-production has in the past been carried on to such an extent that goods have had to be sold in bulk for very considerably lower than the cost of manufacture. Selling at a heavy loss, the manufacturers have sought the nearest means handy to reduce their deficit; and this has usually been found in the reduction of wages, rather than in decreasing the output. A five or ten per cent. reduction has generally brought about a strike, which has, before now, been welcome to great firms, in affording an excuse for ceasing to manufacture at a ruinous loss. To provoke a strike on these terms has been the only way out of an impossible situation; and the indignant workpeople have thus, instead of embarrassing the masters, unwittingly saved them from bankruptcy. The middle course is the expedient of “short time.” These are large and serious questions, happily not of late years pushed forward by circumstances so greatly as of yore; but once very prominent indeed. The literature of cotton-spinning and strikes is a very extensive one, and written upon largely by no less an authority than Mr. John Morley, who is of opinion that “some of them (the manufacturers) are idle, some are incompetent, and some of them are blackguards.” This is severe criticism indeed to pass upon as enterprising and as upright a body of commercial men as it is possible to find in England: men, too, not so long since, generally of his own brand of politics. They do not seem the words of a philosopher.