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97                  The Cotton District

action. There is no re-twisting or re-weaving; everything, if done at all, must be done properly and at the proper moment. Apart from its being a place wherein to earn creditably the daily bread, if there be anything in the world which conduces pre-eminently to the acquisition of habits such as lie at the foundation of good morals, - order, care, cleanliness, punctuality, industry, early rising, - assuredly it is the wholesome discipline of the well-ordered cotton factory. Whatevter may befall outside, there is nothing deleterious inside; the personal intercourse of the people employed is itself reduced to a minimum; if they corrupt one another, it is as people not in factories do. In the rooms and " sheds " devoted to weaving, the rattle of the machinery forbids even conversation, except when the voice is adjusted to it. In the quieter parts the girls show their contentedness not infrequently by singing -

"The joyful token of a happy mind."

"How often," says the type of the true Lancashire poet, most genial of his race, - the late Edwin VVaugh - "how often have I heard some fine psalm-tune streaming in chorus from female voices when passing cotton-mills at work, and mingling with the spoom of thousands of spindles." That the girls in par-