those of the whole past and of the present annual expenses, are, after adding the stipend, and deducting the rents taken.

These amounts for the chapel, added to those already named for the Factory expenses, make a sum of £3,289 for the whole past expense to 31st December, and a sum of £1,105 for the whole present annual expense. With these figures before me, I can understand how, without much personal extravagance, I have been pushed to make both ends meet out of my salary of £1000 a year.

The number of young people belonging to all these schools on the day of your inspection, the 2nd March, was as follows.

If the inspection had been earlier in the year the number would have been a good deal larger. If later it would be smaller, and a re-inspection in the thick of next winter will I hope show 800."

So far for the educational provisions of the factory; but there are other points to which reference must be made, and amongst these the most important is that connected with the management of apprentices.

Coopers, Mr. Wilson observes, are much employed by Price's Patent Candle Company; and though he has known some excellent men amongst the trade, yet, "perhaps from their trade taking them much into breweries and distilleries, and making many of them too well acquainted with the inside of a cask as well as the outside," they are not always to be depended upon; and, in consequence, Mr. Wilson was much annoyed when large numbers were required in the factory. The trade is a close one, and regular coopers will not work in a shop with those who have not served, or who are not serving, a regular apprenticeship. It is, however, strictly in accordance with trade rules, that any freeman of London may take apprentices to his own or any other trade, provided only that he gets them taught the trade; and Mr. Wilson accordingly took out his freedom, and apprenticed half-a-dozen of the best conducted lads himself; had them placed in a shop, unmixed with other coopers, save one, who taught them. The original intention was that they should be coopers in the summer only, and candle makers at the busy period of the year; this plan, however, was abandoned, as it would be unjust towards them, regarding the learning their trade as coopers; and it was found also that

the factory afforded them sufficient employment in cooperage at all seasons. The entire number of apprentices in the factory was, in the year 1852, twenty-five,-being ten coopers, ten engineers, six carpenters, and one coppersmith, all of good character.

Upon the vexed question of over-time, Mr. Wilson has the following observations:

"As for overtime, they will work cheerfully, when required, any number of hours which we, looking to their health, dare allow them to do. We, however, take as little as possible of such overwork, either from our apprentices or from any others in the factory. When an extra quantity of work has to be done, we take on additional people, on the principle that it is better to give five men a day's work each than to give four men a day and-a-quarter each, while the fifth is perhaps starving. To act steadily upon this principle is by no means a popular proceeding, as there is not one man in twenty who is not eager for overtime. Whatever evil may arise from all the late commotion on this subject, there will come also out of it at least this much of good, that it will enable us, and all other factory managers, to quote plenty of working authority for the determination to do away with overtime. We cannot now be accused of harshness and want of consideration for our people for depriving them of it. To prevent its springing up again, through the universal eagerness for it, is one of our constant objects of attention, and has been so for years. You may imagine, then, how exceedingly ludicrous, were not the matter now becoming so deeply painful, much of what has lately been said upon this subject of overtime must appear to my brother and myself, and I suppose to all who happen to be placed by their business in the way of knowing the opinion of working men upon it, when not acting under compulsion. And as for piecework, it is the very soul of many parts of the factory. Not only the wages would be half as much again without it, but the boys and men would lose that smartness and activity which are of at least as much value to them as to their masters. One of our young men, at twenty, who has been at piecework all his boyhood, will do with ease and pleasure such a day's work as would frighten an ordinary time-worker to think of, and will enjoy a cricket match after it. It must provoke every master in the country-not so much to read the speeches of the men, for they are unhappily committed to a certain course, and allowances must be made for their very strong temptation so to colour the facts as to get, if possible, the sympathies of right thinking people on their side-but to see men of social position, education, and undoubted earnestness of purpose gulled into becoming their mouthpieces to the public, and thus getting for them on false grounds some sympathy, at least, to encourage them in continuing for a time longer in the unhappy mistake they have made instead of acknowledging it at once. To see these men doing this, and with no blame attaching to them beyond that of allowing their very earnestness to make them form a strong judgement, and take a decided

part in a matter upon which they are for want of the particular knowledge and experience required utterly incompetent to form a judgement at all, and to think of the misery they are thereby prolonging, makes one feel the force of Dr. Johnson's maxim, that, A man's eagerness to do that good to which he is not called will betray him into crimes.'

This seems a most gossiping letter, but really I had no way of making a report satisfactorily otherwise than by endeavouring to get into your minds all that I have in my own on the subject in question, for to have given merely the figures without the explanations would have given most false impressions. The last page is the only really irrelevant matter, but my excuse for it is, that while taking my tea before setting to my own overtime' for the night, I was running through some of the speeches in question, and felt so boiling over about them, that when I came to the catch word 'apprentices,' I could not help myself."

In addition to the schools and other means of physical and mental improvement, a Mutual Improvement Society has been constituted; its meetings are held in the Railway Arch school-room, and of which Mr. G. F. Wilson is the president. The following table shows the total past outlay, and estimated outlay per annum, for these schools:

Outlays to 31st Dec. 1851 for which it is considered that there is value still remaining.

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The letter of Mr. J. P. Wilson, from which we have gathered these facts now before the reader, was, with the Report of the Education Committee, circulated amongst the Company; and at a General Meeting of the Proprietors, held on the 24th of March, 1852, it was unanimously agreed, that the annual sum of £1,200 should be devoted to the maintenance of the schools, and of the other plans, to that period supported entirely from his own private purse by Mr. Wilson; and also that a sum amounting to £3,289, which he had expended in carrying out his system, should be repaid to him. Every body knows, or should know, Sidney Smith's aphorism, which declares that we are all naturally charitable; "A. never sees B. in want but he wishes C. forthwith to relieve him;" Mr. Wilson however, is not of this class of philanthropists. At the meeting to which we have referred, after the resolution had been passed, he rose and said :—

"I will use the few minutes in which the Chairman is employed in committing the last resolution to writing, in saying a few words upon it. All the men and boys of the factory have believed that the money spent for the schools and other such matters was mine; and no doubt the willingness to spend freely for such purposes has had a good effect upon them. But I should fear that much of that good effect might be lost, if it turned out that the money spent, and for the spending of which I got credit, was not mine after all, but the Company's. For this reason alone, even had there been no other, I dare not take the money back into my own pocket. I have already, some time since, settled this question, for many in our factory being shareholders, copies of the letter so much and so kindly commented upon to-day, necessarily went into it, and I did not like to let these copies appear there without carrying marked upon them the destination of any money which might be repaid to me for the expenses of past years. For this, and for another reason which will appear immediately, I wrote a letter to the factory, or at least to its very sufficient representative-the large number of its very best men forming the new society which you have seen alluded to as having just now sprung up. Of this letter I shall now, with your permission, read the beginning and one other short extract. To my fellow members of the Belmont Mutual Improvement Society. My dear Friends, I wish to give each of you a copy of a letter which I have written to Mr. Brownrigg and Mr. Conybeare, about our schools, and about the moral state of the factory generally. Will you, each of you, oblige me by reading that letter very carefully, and, if you find anything in it which may appear to contain any mis-statement, or any false colouring,or in any way to give an untrue impression of the state of the factory in a moral and educational point of view, will you point it out to one or other of your committee. When you have done this, I shall beg of your committee to hold a special meeting, at which its members, who will thus have among them the views of every one in the Society, may compare notes together, and decide whether any,

and if so, what corrections should be made in my letter, to make it perfectly accurate in all points, and thus to give an absolutely true impression to those who read it, of the true state of the factory.

Of course I shall not be present at the meeting of the committee; Mr. Craddock and Mr. Day will report to me whatever may be decided at it.

'One of my reasons for wishing my letter to undergo this revision is that I want to get it completely adopted by you as your own. I should like it to express your feelings as much as mine, so that I may have been your spokesman, as it were, in the matter. In this way it will not be so much my letter to Mr. Brownrigg and Mr. Conybear as the letter of the factory as a body to the shareholders as a body: a communication between two friends compelled by circumstances to live apart, but who may not on that account be the less anxious for each other's welfare.'

Gentlemen, the result of this application to the new society was, first a thorough discussion of my educational letter by the full Managing Committee of sixteen, and then the unanimous and most hearty adoption of that letter as their own. You will feel with me that this stamps a very great additional value upon it.

The remaining short extract which I have to read, gives the destination of the £3,289, you are now so kindly returning to me. If the Company should vote to me any part of the expenses of the schools in past years, this shall be the first beginning of a fund for building, somewhere near the factory, a beautiful chapel for ourselves, with your society's rooms on one side, and schools on the

other.'

To the contents of this extract I have only to add that, from the way in which the matter has been viewed by the few friends to whom it has been mentioned, there is a good hope, that many more thou. sand pounds will be forthcoming, so that our work may presently assume as much beauty materially, as that which it already possesses morally, in the pictures, at least, drawn of it in some of the flattering speeches of to day, to which pictures it must now be the constant endeavour of us all to give more and more of reality."

Having thus succeeded in proving the excellence of his arrangements, Mr. Wilson became once more a benefactor to the Company. He believed that if a greater interest in the work could be given to the persons employed, it would be found advantageous in every respect. There was, it appeared, no necessity to create this spirit; it existed so fully and plainly that one of the foremen, speaking of the workers, remarked to Mr. Wilson,-"To look at them, one would think each was engaged in a little business of his own, so as to have only himself effected by the results of his work." But Mr. Wilson's great desire was to preserve this spirit; and to secure this object he proposed the following plan :

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"We would, along with the thanks of the Directors, have it made