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| LINEN FACTORY, BELFAST. -The scene shown in our sketch represents the section of a Belfast linen factory in which women are exclusively employed. While the heavier work is done by men, what is called "roving," with wet spinning and reeling, is done by females, many of them girls of tender years. In her graphic book, "Here and There through Ireland," Miss Mary Banim, daughter of the noted Irish novelist, says: "This work is exceedingly interesting to a looker-on, who watches with wonder that activity of eye and hand, the care and dexterity, with which thousands of spindles are kept in such order. One girl will tend as many as twenty-four spindles, thus doing the work of forty-eight spinners of the olden times, as each spindle is said to produce double the quantity of yarn that could be spun at the old-fashioned wheel. It is wonderful to see the rapid whirl of the bobbins of all sizes, as the yarn, from the coarsest to the almost invisibly fine, is spun and wound on them. It is very interesting and very beautiful work, but at the same time, one cannot help, especially in the wet spinning room, thinking how painfully hard these young children, girls and women must work, that they may live and that the rich may wear fine linen." And how miserably paid they are! The "half-timers," as the minors are called, receive at most, one dollar a week -generally less, or an average of about 72 cents! The adults receive about one dollar and ninety cents for the same period, on "full time." Surely, "Chinese cheap labor" is not unknown in Belfast. |
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