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Iron-workers are paid a still higher rate of wages. A plate-roller
easily makes three hundred a year.[2] The rollers in rail mills often
make much more. In busy times they have made as much as from seven to
ten guineas a week, or equal to from three to five hundred a year.[3]
But, like the workers in cotton mills, the iron workers are often helped
by their sons, who are also paid high wages. Thus, the under-hands are
usually boys from fourteen years of age and upwards, who earn about
nineteen shillings a week, and the helpers are boys of under fourteen,
who earn about nine shillings a week.
[Footnote 2: See Messrs. Fox, Head, and Co.'s return, in the Blue Book
above referred to. This was the rate of wages at Middlesborough, in
Yorkshire. In South Wales, the wages of the principal operatives engaged
in the iron manufacture, recently, were--Puddlers. 9_s_. a day; first
heaters on the rail mills. 8_s_. 9_d_. a day: second heaters, 11_s_.
7_d_.: roughers, 10_s_. 9_d_.: rollers, 13_s_. 2_d_., or equal to that
amount.]
[Footnote 3: Even at the present time, when business is so much
depressed, the mill-rollers make an average wage of L5 10_s_. a week.]
These earnings are far above the average incomes of the professional
classes. The rail rollers are able to earn a rate of pay equal to that
of Lieutenant-Colonels in Her Majesty's Foot Guards; plate-rollers equal
to that of Majors of Foot; and roughers equal to that of Lieutenants and
Adjutants.
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