The Saturday half-holiday, by Josiah Brearley

An original letter to a newspaper written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this letter to a local newspaper, written in 1845, the owner of a cotton-spinning mill explains why he has begun closing his mill at one o’clock on Saturdays.

Sir, several of my neighbours in the trade have asked me, some of them with considerable heat, why I have taken leave of my senses and given my hands the Saturday afternoon. Since the matter is talked of in every counting-house in Ashworth, I beg leave to answer them through your columns, once and for all.

Let me say at once that I am no philanthropist. I am a man of business, and I have never yet done a thing in my mill that I did not expect to pay. When I first closed the gates at one o’clock on a Saturday, last March, I did so as an experiment, and I kept the books more carefully that quarter than I have ever kept them in my life.

These are the results. In the old days, when we worked until six on Saturday, half the hands did not appear until ten on Monday, and those who did were fit for very little. Now they come in at six sharp, rested and clean, and the first hours of the week are as good as any. Spoiled work has fallen by nearly a quarter. We have had four accidents at the machines in nine months, against eleven in the nine months before, and every accident costs me a hand and a doctor’s bill. My output for the quarter is higher, not lower, than it was when the mill ran the longer hours.

I have also used my eyes. On a fine Saturday afternoon I see my spinners in the new park, or at cricket on the Moor, or taking their children up the river in a hired boat. The young women attend the sewing class at the chapel. The beerhouses, I am told, are no fuller than they were, and I believe that a man who has had a whole afternoon in the air is less inclined to spend his Sunday in the gin shop. I do not say that every one of them makes a wise use of his liberty. Some do not. But I had rather they were foolish in the daylight than sullen at my machines.

I will add one thing more, though my neighbours will laugh at it. A girl of fourteen who has stood at a mule for seventy hours is a girl still. I have daughters of my own. I did not like to think of them in her place, and I find that I like it better now.

I invite any master in Ashworth to inspect my books. I shall not show him my heart, which is no business of his; but the figures will satisfy him, and they may even persuade him. Your obedient servant, Josiah Brearley.

“The writer cares more about his profits than about the welfare of his workers.”

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