of 70lbs.; meal, £2 l0s. per load; beef, 61/2d per lb. ; and cheese, 7d. per lb. Land in this part of the country now lets for £5 per Cheshire acre, and the annual rent of an ordinary factory operative's cottage is about £6 10s. to £7 10s.

A few years previous to the first introduction of the factory system, agriculture and manufactures afforded almost equal proportions of employment to the popula- tion. This association of the two, especially when trade is scattered through a country "seems to be the most effectual method of keeping the poor in constant employment. Country manufacturers escape the immorality and dissipation which is too much connected with large towns, and have this further advantage, that in the occasional stagnation to which all manufactures are subject, or upon an unusual demand for agricultural labour, they can vary their occupation; a mode of life which is not more conducive to the health than con- genial to the natural dispositions of mankind."

Several of the fustian manufacturers had begun by this period, 1740-1760, "to acquire little fortunes, but they worked as hard and lived in as plain a manner as the hands they employed, increasing their fortunes as well by economy as by moderate gains."

Few capitals of £1000 acquired by trade existed in this part of the country before 1690. "However, towards the latter end of the seventeenth, and the beginning of the eighteenth century, the traders had certainly got money beforehand, and began to build modern brick houses, in place of those of wood and plaster. A number of the farmer manufacturers erected commodious loom shops adjacent to their dwellings, where they frequently employed several journeymen weavers, in addition to the members of their own families. The operations of spinning and roving were chiefly attended to by females mostly in the upper rooms of their cottages.

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