Abstract
TO all who study anxiously social science, this is a very promising publication; its indirect testimony to the advantages of Republican institutions will be weightier to any reflective man than the eloquent tirades that are so usually bestowed upon them. -It defines its object to be the stimulation and assistance of the wage-worker in his endeavour to reach a higher position. Its information respecting working men is all taken from their own contributions, a dozen pages of small print being filled with verbatim quotations from the replies of workpeople in every trade in the State, who give such varied accounts of themselves that the independence of the testimony cannot be doubted. That its work is popular is indicated by the wish expressed by one of them that “there should be a National Bureau.” Factory legislation is printed in it (even 1884 legislation, although the printer's date is 1883!); the factory inspector has become a popular institution, and much testimony is borne to the smaller hardship of factory laws uniformly than loosely enforced. The more educated and more prosperous workmen are, the more ambitious and aspiring they become, and we seem on the eve of their blending with their masters when complaints are made, as here, that many of their fellow-workmen are satisfied with only 66 shillings a week wages; and a caution is held forth to such not to spend their money in foolishly aping the rich.
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U.S. Industrial Statistics 1 . Nature 32, 369–370 (1885). https://doi.org/10.1038/032369a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/032369a0