After a time, those upright and benevolent employers who have done this justice to their assistants, at the risk of loss, will exercise an influence on those who are less generous than themselves. When they have experienced that this liberality has brought into their service the best young men in the trade, and good assistants bringing good customers, their shops are, cæteris paribus, more popular than others, because better conducted; this experience cannot long escape the observation of the most sceptical.

The welfare of these young men may be further promoted by the ministers of Christ. An apostle has charged Christian masters to give unto their servants that which is just and equal, knowing that they have also a Master in heaven.* With equal propriety may Christian ministers exhort this particular class of masters in their congregations, to consider the health, morals, and happiness, of those who serve them, by abridging their hours of labour.

But, above all, the customers have this matter chiefly in their own hands. If every one into whose hands the following Essay may fall, and who may have occasion to buy goods in a draper's shop, will, for the sake of humanity and justice to the young men who labour in those shops, resolve henceforth to shop by daylight alone, and to prefer those shops which, being otherwise equal to their competitors, do likewise close the earliest, almost all the shops would soon find their interest and their duty to be identified.

Similar views to these are detailed at greater length in the following Essay, to which I have been requested to prefix a short introduction. Christian reader, in the pages of that Essay you may perceive how your influence may materially promote the happiness of many thousands of young persons, both in the metropolis, and in the other cities of the empire. But "to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Lend your aid, therefore, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free. Give a cup of cold water in your Master's name to those who are fainting along the dry and dusty road of life. And may the same Christian charity which broke off the fetters of the West Indian slave, protect the comforts of those young persons upon whom the keen and eager competitions of trade have inflicted so much injustice.

Hornsey, Oct. 30, 1843.

* 1 Colossians, iv. 1.

BAPTIST W. NOEL.

ESSAY,

&c. &c.

Of all the various objects which strike the attention, and excite the wonder, of a stranger upon his first arrival in the "Great Metropolis," there are few more prominent than the many glittering shops which meet his gaze in every direction. While passing along the principal streets, you meet with a succession of plate-glass fronts constructed in a costly manner, and often displaying a high degree of architectural skill. Within the windows, and separated from the gazer by enormous squares of glass, the transparency of which seems to mock the foggy atmosphere without, are displayed, in the most skilful manner, all the rich variety of woman's dress. It is as if at the bidding of some magic power, the silks of the East, the cottons of the West, and the furs of the North, after having been wrought into a thousand various forms and patterns, had been collected into one gorgeous exhibition, to illustrate the triumphs of art in ministering to the adornment of the human form. The interior of these shops is not less worthy of attention than the exterior. Some of them, from the profusion of glass-reflectors which they exhibit, might be called “halls of mirrors;" while others, with their stately columns and luxurious carpets, seem to rival the palaces of princes.

Perhaps few of the fair purchasers who admire these shops and their contents ever bestow a thought upon the condition of the young men who so blandly and politely

B

serve in them. Yet it is a mournful fact, that there exists in connexion with all this bright display much of positive evil, not to say of misery.

The cause of this evil is as follows:

:

The young men who serve in the shops are engaged in business variously from the hours of six, seven, or eight o'clock in the morning, to nine, ten, eleven, or twelve o'clock in the evening; these variations being according to the season, the character of the shop, and the custom of the neighbourhood. That is, they are occupied for a longer time each day in the summer than in the winter, in all shops; while those shops which are frequented chiefly by the middle or working classes are kept open later than those which are frequented by the upper classes. A further difference also exists according to the kind of street in which the shop may be situated. Thus in busy thoroughfares they are generally kept open later than in more retired streets.

The best shops in the best neighbourhoods are generally opened at seven o'clock in the morning (in some few cases at six o'clock), at which hour a certain number of the young men come down to make preparations for business in their several departments. At eight o'clock (or in some cases at half-past seven) the others, who may be called the seniors, come down, when the former party are allowed to retire for half-an-hour for the purpose of dressing. After their reappearance there is no further release from the engagements of the shop (excepting for those wonderfully short periods of time in which assistant-drapers manage to consume the necessary quantity of food at meals), until the whole business of the day is over; and every article, from a piece of silk to a roll of riband or a paper of pins, has been carefully put into its appointed place. Sometimes, when, owing to the weather or some other cause, there have been but few customers during the day, this rearrangement is completed by the time of shutting the shop, which in the present case is from eight o'clock to nine in the winter, and from nine to ten in the summer. But, on busy days, and during nearly the whole of the spring and former part of the summer, it is

often found to be impossible to leave the shop within one, two, or three hours after it has been closed. So that during a large part of the year, it is a common thing for these young men to be pent up in the shop from six or seven o'clock in the morning until ten or eleven at night.

This is a description of the present mode of carrying on business, as it appears in the most favourable aspect. The far larger number of shops, which are frequented chiefly by the middle and working classes, are kept open until nine or ten o'clock in the winter, and ten or eleven in the summer. So that it frequently happens that the young men are employed from seven o'clock in the morning until twelve at night; that is, for a period of seventeen hours out of the twenty-four!*

On Saturdays the time for closing (as if in mockery of a "preparation for the Sabbath ") is in all cases later. In many shops the young men are often unable to retire to rest until one or two o'clock in the Sunday morning. Well indeed, may the tired shopman, as he greets the day upon which he then enters, say with the poet,

"Welcome, sweet day of REST!"

This, reader, is a plain unvarnished statement of the case which we have to plead before you. We have used no hyperbolical language to heighten the effect of facts; we have presented to you no extreme case for the sake of producing a deeper impression; we have stated nothing but what we have ourselves seen and experienced; and for the truth of the statement, we may appeal to the experience of thousands who are now suffering from this iniquitous state of things.

And who are the persons who have to endure this longcontinued toil and close confinement? Not the negroes of of Africa, else a universal cry of sympathy would ere now have been raised; not the sons of poverty, inured to privation and suffering from their childhood;—they are, for the

*

During the past winter a slight improvement has been effected in some neighbourhoods, as Chelsea and Islington, but it is so partial as not materially to affect the truth of general statement.

most part young men born of respectable parents, who have received a tolerably good education, who have been brought up tenderly beneath the eye of a mother, and who come from happy homes in all the bloom and buoyancy of youth, to enter upon such a life as this! Besides these young men, there are a considerable number of young women (probably not less than a thousand) engaged in the various branches of the drapery trade; and although their sex procures for them some trifling immunities, they yet share largely in all the evils of this system.

The mere 66 statement of the case" might seem sufficient to secure a judgment in our favour; yet with a view to obtain for these persons the sympathy of the public, and a just regard to their welfare from their employers, we propose to examine in detail the effects of this system upon the HEALTH, INTELLECT, and MORALS of those who are exposed to its influence; and then to point out some of the advantages which would result to the ASSISTANTS, the EMPLOYERS, and the PUBLIC, from closing the shops at an earlier hour.

I. We are to inquire into the effects of this system upon the HEALTH of those who are subject to it.

Happily the time is gone by, in which men considered health and disease to be matters over which they had no control; and in regard to which they were entirely at the mercy of mere accident without, and of unknown causes within. They have begun to see that the human body stands in certain established relationships to the external world, and is placed under an economy of fixed organic laws, upon the due observance of which, under God, its well-being mainly depends. It is to be regretted that in this case, as well as in many others, knowledge is so unproductive of corresponding practice. Numbers who admit the truth of the general principle just mentioned, never make any effort to obtain an acquaintance with these laws; while many others who are acquainted with them, are utterly careless about their observance. Let these carry

their own burthen, we ask no sympathy for them. But, alas! how many are there who are compelled, either by circumstances over which they have no control, or by the